California Dreaming
by Bons Baisers
Summary: Cursed with immortality, cruelly separated from Kagome, Inuyasha struggles to survive the five hundred years that separate him from the only thing he's ever believed in. Placed second for the Inuyasha FanGuild's Best Drama award.
1. Prologue

Inuyasha, his friends, and his world belong to Rumiko Takahashi.

PROLOGUE

London really wasn't a very attractive city, Isaac Tyson mused to himself, observing the streets from the window of his private parlor. People scurried like ants along the road, rarely pausing to acknowledge their fellow insects, unless it was to bite off a scathing "mind yer step" if the unfortunate pest tread too closely upon their heels. Not so very long ago, beggars lined the street below; new vagrancy laws under the Lord Protector had swept them away.

Isaac hadn't been especially pleased about that. One of the beggars had been an old mustered-out soldier, who often spun tales of the glory days for Isaac in exchange for a hot meal, days when the Commonwealth had been fresh and new and full of ideals, and the New Model Army had been a legend in its own time. But Cromwell had betrayed the principles he'd fought for, and his son lacked the charisma his father had exercised to maintain military control. The Commonwealth falling to pieces, and Isaac privately thought that Charles Stuart, or King Charles II in some circles, could do no worse than his more "liberal" predecessors.

A commotion in the street drew Isaac's attention. A young woman was on her knees, in tears, reaching for something that had evidently been taken from her. A crowd of burly, rough-looking men surrounded her. Isaac saw the flash of a gold chain as one of the men dealt a vicious blow to the girl, a blow that left her gasping for breath, prostrate on the filthy street.

Within seconds, the window was unlatched and thrown open, and Isaac had leapt nimbly down to the crowd. Though he was not as bulky as the men he approached, he was taller, and his fine linen clothing served to guard him from any unwelcome attention as he forced his way into the circle.

"When, pray tell," he began haughtily, "did it become common practice for Londoners to assault women in the streets?"

"She's a bloody Catholic, gov'ner," one of the belligerents protested. "An' a whore besides!"

"She's a woman, isn't she?" He offered his hand to the girl, who took it, though hesitantly. "That ought to be protection enough, whatever her religion!"

The man who had spoken had the good grace to look ashamed.

"Did you take something from her?" Isaac demanded, lifting the girl to her feet.

" 'Twas me mam's rosary 'e took, ser," she mumbled, looking horrified. She probably was horrified, Isaac grimaced inwardly. How often did a girl like this meet with any kindness? The only "gentlemen" she'd ever seen were probably those who stripped her down, took the only valuable possession she had, and left a few coins on the bed when they were done. All without ever knowing her name.

"Return the trinket to its mistress," Isaac ordered, laying a piercing glare on each of the scoundrels. The individual who had struck the girl cast the rosary at her feet and stalked away, muttering darkly. The others slowly dispersed as well.

Isaac knelt to retrieve the rosary. The gold was a bit tarnished, but every bead was intact. Obviously, its owner had done her best to properly care for the heirloom.

"I believe this is yours, miss." He offered it to her.

"Thank 'e, ser," she whispered, curtseying clumsily. She fumbled for the golden strand of beads, and scurried away.

_Like an insect_, Isaac thought sadly. He sighed, and walked back toward the townhouse he had been forced to vacate so unexpectedly. Running a weary hand through his thick black locks, he reached for the door handle.

"Hello, Inuyasha." A light, mocking voice sailed down to him from his own window. Startled, he backed away from the door and managed to catch a glimpse of red hair before the figure sporting it retreated from his parlor window. Off-balance, concerned that someone had entered his home without his knowing, and convinced that the stranger had confused him with another – Inuyasha? Really, what kind of name was that, anyway? – he threw the door open. As he prepared to charge up the stairs to confront the intruder, he found the red-haired individual comfortably ensconced in the downstairs parlor, in his favorite chair, no less, looking for all the world as though he hadn't just raced down a flight of stairs.

Fiery red locks cascaded over the stranger's shoulder, bound by a leather thong at the nape of his neck. Though he appeared to be no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, his twinkling eyes held worlds of mischief and wisdom. His clothes were obviously foreign, as was he, but the most remarkable feature of the invader was the amused expression on his face.

"Who are you?" Isaac demanded. The figure ignored his question, but his expression slowly turned pensive, and the smile on his lips faded.

"It's about that time again, Inuyasha," he noted thoughtfully. Staring out the window into the street, he added, "Though it doesn't seem that you're leaving much behind this time."

Isaac repeated his question.

"I think we more or less decided to dispense with the formalities last time," the red-headed youth shrugged. "So time-consuming. There's an old battered sword lying on the harpsichord over there. Pick that up for a minute, and if you still find your questions unanswered, then I'll resolve them for you."

"Now wait one bloody minute!" Isaac objected hotly. "Just who the deuce are you, anyhow, that you think you can command me in my own home?"

The formerly twinkling eyes rolled back in exasperation. "Only the guy who's been taking care of you these hundred and fifty years past." When Issac opened his mouth to protest again (he was only twenty-two), the red-head growled – yes, growled! – at him. "Pick up the damned sword, Inuyasha. I promise, all your questions will be answered, if you'll just cooperate, just this once. I don't want to go through this every single time, you know."

"I'm not – what did you say? – Eenyashah." Infuriated but certain he would get nowhere with the youth until he had done as asked, he stalked to the harpsichord, keeping his eyes on the red-head all the while. The sword was, as the devil in his chair had said, old and battered and probably completely useless. Nothing he could see indicated that it had the capability to answer questions. He glared at the intruder once more before snatching the old blade up.

The rush of memory forced him to his knees.

_Kagome._

"Shit!" he ground out when he could speak again. Shippou was at his shoulder, crouching beside him.

"That looks likes it gets harder every time," Shippou said sympathetically.

"It does get harder every time." Inuyasha rocked back on his heels and was silent for a minute as he looked around Isaac Tyson's main parlor. He picked up a lock of silvery hair, a shade he hadn't seen in ten long years.

"I'm never going to get used to this." Images of Isaac's friends flashed through his mind. William and Emerson weren't going to be happy to see him go. But go he must, and say his goodbyes tonight, during the new moon.

Outside, the sun was setting, and soon, the silver hair would revert to black. The sounds and scents he was picking up on would disappear. The clawed hands he hadn't fought with in over a century and half would become the weak and useless appendages that had seen Isaac Tyson and fourteen other human versions of himself through their ten years of existence.

He drew a deep breath, closing his eyes against the memories each life kindled in his soul.

When he finally opened them, he saw Shippo sitting at the harpsichord, waiting.

"Did you ever learn to play this?" the kitsune asked curiously.

"Why?" Inuyasha asked suspiciously.

"Just a little detail I could include in future illusions," he shrugged. He looked down at the keys, pointedly not looking at Inuyasha. "The more of you I can preserve in the illusion, the less difficult remembering everything will be when it's time to move on."

Night fell, shriving away the brief taste of supernatural senses, reminding him he needed to make his farewells.

"Have I thanked you?" Inuyasha asked suddenly. Though gratitude came to him as naturally as anyone else, expressing it was not something he ever felt comfortable with. Still, Shippou was probably the only reason he'd kept his mind after Naraku's terrible curse, and he didn't exactly have a lot of time before he lost himself in another of the kitsune's illusory lives.

"Yeah. Don't worry about it." He grinned suddenly. "I knew what I was getting into. Being your keeper was never going to be an easy job."

Inuyasha harrumphed gruffly, pleased that this particular bit of discomfort had passed so inoffensively. "Where to now?" he asked.

"Turkey, Ishmael al-Rashid," Shippou supplied.

Inuyasha groaned. After fifty years of living in lands that abhorred Muslims, the idea of ten years in Turkey rankled painfully. It was foolish; his half-demon nature knew it, but it wasn't as if he could just lose all of the memories he'd created, and many of those memories included horror stories about savage Turks. The idea of being one of the said savage Turks was unpleasant.

Shippou shrugged. "I thought you were getting to be too European. Maybe we'll go back to Japan next time."

Japan. It would be a hundred years now since he'd learned of Sango and Miroku's deaths.

"_Miroku? And Sango?" he asked hungrily, having just awakened from his ten-year submersion in one of Shippo's false lives. They were nearing their seventies now…_

_The kitsune's face clouded over. "He passed on about eight years ago. She wasted away after that; she was gone in three months. We buried them together, near Kohaku's grave."_

_A terrible wrench tore at Inuyasha's soul, and a lump the size of his fist hung cruelly in his throat. He hadn't seen them since Shippo had laid the first illusion on him, fifty years ago. And now he would never see them again._

"_I was supposed to give you these." He stretched out a clawed hand – now nearly as big as Inuyasha's own – and offered the half-demon a shining metal mask and a string of rosary beads. "Chiyoue – their oldest daughter, you remember – wanted you to have them. Said you had more memories of these things than she did."_

_Looking away, perhaps as much to respect Inuyasha's grief as to conceal his own tears, Shippou withdrew his hand when the objects were removed. _

_But though Inuyasha couldn't know, in the corner of his eye, Shippou watched the half-demon carefully tuck both into his shirt._

Inuyasha rose. After the initial memories of Kagome reasserted themselves in his consciousness, it was this memory that assaulted him, every decade of these past hundred years. From the door, carefully keeping sadness from his voice, Inuyasha told the kitsune to wait for him, and to stay out of sight.

"I have to make my goodbyes. Then we can go."

ooooo

Ishmael al-Rashid passed his ten years comfortably, as did the persona that followed him, and the persona after that. Shippou was always careful to settle him in a fairly respectable position, within the ranks of the minor nobility or the upper echelons of what would come to be termed the bourgeoisie; never placed highly enough to be noticeable, never lowly enough to be uncomfortable. He didn't return to Japan; no, he specifically asked not to be placed there, having no desire to return to the birthplace of his unenviable dilemma. In the brief days Inuyasha spent between lives, conscious of himself and his peculiar, difficult situation, he struggled with depression and found himself longing to submerge himself in whatever new illusory life Shippou had created for him. His feelings toward the kitsune wobbled wildly between profound gratitude and black hatred; at times he was awed and humbled by depth of Shippou's devotion to him, and at others he was deeply resentful of his dependence on the fox's machinations. He did as he was told, because he had no choice, and because he really didn't have enough strength left to make choices anyway.

What little strength he felt remained to him he spent in trying to block _her_ from his memories, her and all the questions that surrounded her.

Had he pushed her through the well in time? Had she made it home? Had the well remained intact, or had it collapsed on her when it crumbled in the feudal era? Had she been hurt in the crash? Or worse…. Was she safe? Was she even alive?

Would she move on… without him?

He had been prepared to leave Kikyo behind. She was dead; her murderer was dead. He was ready move forward in his life.

If he didn't reach her in time, could she do the same? Could he find her in her futuristic city, with its damnably strange smells and twisty-turning streets and mountain-like buildings?

Before someone else found her… before someone else took her.

Haunted with unanswered questions and fears, plagued by doubts, Inuyasha welcomed Shippou's illusions as reprieves from himself, from his immortal existence, from the uncertainties he wasn't brave enough to face.

He welcomed the illusions. And hated himself for his cowardice.


	2. Treasures

Nope, still not mine.

TREASURES

Inuyasha absently pushed hair out of his eyes as he carefully stowed another piece of his life away in the painted wooded chest that contained his most prized memories. It was a black-and-white photograph, and he was uncharacteristically gentle with it. It had been a secret possession; if it had ever been circulated, there would have been hell to pay. Sixteen runaway slaves crowded together around Rachel, Soloman, and himself, sad-eyed and dour, but well-fed, healthy, and because of the Underground Railroad, free. It had been one of his finer decades, one he felt had been well spent. Soloman, himself a manumitted slave, had religiously plowed through the forested hills of southern Ohio and northern Kentucky, tramped through tributary rivers to throw off dogs, and even fought the slave-catchers hand-to-hand on more than one occasion. Always in his adventures, he was accompanied by his friend, Ian Tynte, the curiously dark-headed Irishman who stood beside him in the photograph.

He found he couldn't quite close the chest over the photograph, and stared at his two friends for a good long while, lost in memory.

"_Soloman!" Rachel screamed._

_The mob circled in closer. Two men held Rachel fast, despite her best efforts. He _– no, Ian, he reminded himself, shaking his head to clear it – _stood back to back, each with fists raised. Soloman was a big man, finely muscled, made so by years of hard labor, and Ian, though slighter, was no pushover. But the bastards surrounding them were armed with pistols and shotguns, and no amount of skill would suffice against a gun-barrel leveled at one's head._

_Soloman attacked first, characteristically brave._

_"Don't you worry, Miss Rachel," he called out confidently, wrenching a sawed-off shot-gun from of the hands of one of the startled mob. _

_Ian wasn't far behind him, and had a pistol of his own in seconds. The shots began to fly._

_Ian wasn't sure how he and Soloman avoided being shot full of holes. It had been dark, that was true, and certainly the nine men weren't professional marksmen, but even so, they weren't but a few feet away. Soloman and Ian made every blow count, knocking weapons away right and left, hoping to keep the crowd away from the house and the four escaped slaves within long enough for the two brothers and their companions to quietly disappear. This they managed, though Rachel's rambling manor and all the subsidiary buildings around it were burned to the ground that night. _

_No one counted on Rachel being the one real casualty of the firefight._

Inuyasha's throat constricted painfully. She had been a lot like Kagome, and maybe that was why he'd been so drawn to her that first week in Ohio, even though he couldn't have realized that at the time. Innocent but full of faith and conviction, she'd gotten involved with the Underground Railroad at the tender age of thirteen, when an injured runaway had stumbled upon her while she had been gathering flowers for her mother. Terrified and desperate, the slave had threatened her life.

She did more or less what Kagome would have done. She pooh-poohed him and demanded to see his injury, whereupon the astonished slave shut his mouth and let the girl attend him. After binding his wounds, she hid him in her father's stables until the slave-catchers that had been on his trail retreated. Her father was an abolitionist, and though until that moment he hadn't been involved with the newborn Underground Railroad, he eventually threw himself and his resources into it in the face of his daughter's courageous decision to save the runaway.

_Soloman cradled the bloody Rachel to his breast, eyes stricken, fearful._

"_Miss Rachel," he whispered brokenly._

"_I never expected to be a martyr," Rachel commented, eyes tight with pain. "No, I certainly did not."_

"_You're not going to die, Rachel," Ian swore, crouching beside them._

"_I don't think that's up to you, dear," she returned, and coughed weakly. "Poor darlings. I hate to leave you alone."_

"_No, Miss Rachel," Soloman asserted. "I don't believe I'll let any such of a thing happen to you. You're more use to this world as a savior than a martyr." He gathered her up in his arms and began to make his way to town. Ian saw what he was doing, and raced ahead to alert the town doctor that he had a serious case on the way, and to get ready._

Rachel had lost consciousness by the time Soloman reached the doctor's house. As Ian watched his big, dark-skinned friend suffer quietly beside her bedside over the next few days, he saw something he had somehow missed in the years that had fomented their friendship. Soloman, though he would never, could never admit it, was in love with the beautiful white abolitionist.

And when she began to stir restlessly in disturbed delirium, the name she called out most frequently, most passionately, was Soloman's.

How he could have been so oblivious, Inuyasha didn't know. But after Shippou lifted the illusion of Ian Tynte from him on the night of the new moon, he offered to help smuggle the pair to Canada, confident that he could convince the kitsune to disguise him to continue to look like his human self. In Canada, the French had freely intermarried with Indians; he hoped that perhaps a love considered taboo in Ohio might find some peace in the cold north.

They refused to go.

"_There's too much left to do, Ian," Rachel said sadly._

"_We thank you for the offer," Soloman added, "but we just can't pick up and go. There's still too many people out there who need us._

"_Like we need you," Rachel added, a little flash of fire in her eyes. "Why can't you tell us where you're going?" _

_He didn't answer, but instead pleaded with them one last time, "Think about it, please – I can only do this for you this once. I won't be around to help you anymore after tonight."_

_It killed him to have to say it, every time he had to make his goodbyes to the people that had cared for him. They didn't usually take it well, and when the friendship had become as deep as what he shared with Rachel and Soloman, he didn't take it very well either._

"_No, my friend," Soloman maintained in his slow tidewater drawl. The basso sotto voice was one of the most comforting sounds Inuyasha could ever remember hearing, but now it tore at his gut accusingly._

_He drew Rachel roughly into his arms, and did not protest when the big black man wrapped his own thick dark arms around them both._

"_Then I have to say goodbye."_

Inuyasha touched Rachel's face one last time before closing the chest.

"You really need to clean this place up," Shippou noted, perched on an armoire in the corner.

"There's over three hundred years worth of stuff piled up here," Inuyasha groused, trying to push the doomed lovers out of his mind. Shippou usually tried to keep up with the people he'd become closest to, and the news he'd eventually offered about Rachel and Soloman was bad. The town had discovered that Soloman and Rachel were lovers.

And they hung them for perverse relations between the races.

That was sixteen years back, now, and guilt gnawed viciously at him. If he'd been there, it wouldn't have happened. He'd have moved heaven and earth first. He'd have killed everyone who tried to hurt them. He'd have –

Made a big mess, Shippou usually broke into his tirades.

Shippou was probably right. He'd made a special point to place Inuyasha in a very quiet, very peaceful little town in China during his next cycle. No wars. No deep-seated hatreds. No real violence to speak of. No real friends, either. It had been a sweet, dull existence, his clearest memory of which was the sunshine on the wet rice paddies. That was the illusion he'd just woken from two days ago, before retreating to his castle.

That had been Shippou's idea, the castle, though Inuyasha had probably taken the idea much further than the kitsune had expected him to. The aristocracy was in its twilight years, out of power and out of money. Many were leaving and selling their ancient ancestral fortresses all over Europe, while Shippou, on the other hand, was becomingly phenomenally wealthy. He proved to be as shrewd a businessman as ever he had been a manipulative child. He'd uncovered the clever scheme of developing the persona of a successful merchant for himself back in the sixteen hundreds, and since then periodically took on the guise of that person's descendents. It was a little tricky, playing two – or sometimes even three – inter-generational roles at once, but the game suited his mischievous nature and clever mind superbly. At any rate, he had tired of stowing all of Inuyasha's possessions from his multiple lives, and finally demanded Inuyasha find his own place. The castle was the result.

It was huge, and Inuyasha was privately rather proud of it. He bought it himself – any amount of money left alone long enough in a bank will make more money, and, having no real use for English pounds in India, or German marks in the Americas, the money he had earned for himself in the past three hundred odd years had multiplied nicely. It was nowhere near enough to rival Shippou's fortunes, but then, Shippou hadn't ever been to Kagome's time, and Inuyasha had. One day, not very many lives in the future, he would make a killing in the electronics market. But that was yet to come. For the time being, his castle was the only thing he felt compelled to purchase.

It was French, for France happened to be a nation he had special memories of. Constructed in the fourteenth century, it had become rather rundown in the four hundred years that passed before Inuyasha took possession of it. It had been besieged at some point, and the village below had withered and dried, leaving Montesquieu Castle alone against the towering Alps beyond. It was a lonely sort of place, where the soil wasn't especially good and the skies were generally pretty gray, but it suited Inuyasha. The frou-frou architecture, with its soaring arches and skinny towers, didn't appeal to him, but the chapel on the eastern side of the complex had the most beautiful stained glass windows he had ever seen, and the rose windows that adorned the inner palace were only marginally less stunning.

Inuyasha had taken almost an entire decade of the forty-four years he had available to him to make the castle into a home, though he would spend little time there after he finally had it arranged to his liking. Shippou hadn't been thrilled about the idea of his wasting that time – "What if something were to happen to me?" he'd demanded – but still Inuyasha devoted over nine years to the castle and its grounds. Someday, he would find Kagome. Someday, he would need to provide her with a home. And Montesquieu was the perfect place. She deserved nothing less than a palace, and he fully intended to see that she got exactly what she deserved.

After he left, to fade away into yet another life, Shippou had taken the responsibility for caring for the castle into his own hands, choosing caretakers for Montesquieu as carefully as he chose them for his own estates. These had to be extremely trustworthy individuals, for as time passed, Inuyasha's memorabilia became rare and precious, and some rooms within the castle Shippou locked off entirely, never to be breached by anyone but himself or the half-demon he protected, and so Montesquieu's treasures were always well cared for.

Montesquieu possessed a treasure of an altogether different nature as well. In the southernmost field, surrounded by a simple ring of large quartz crystals, there were two gravestones. One bore the name Solange d'Allaise, the other Maurice St. Julian. A white marble plaque rested between the two stones, and read "Together in death, as in life; beloved in death, as in life." Like Rachel and Soloman, Solange and Maurice were some of those important friends that forever haunted his memories. Unlike Rachel and Soloman, he'd encountered Maurice and Solange long before his revolutionary days in late eighteenth century France.

Only back then, their names had been Miroku and Sango.


	3. Faces From the Past

Not mine, don't sue.

I had trouble with the chapter; it just wouldn't flow the way I wanted it to. Let me know what you think!

FACES FROM THE PAST

"_Maurice!" A gasp. A rustle of fabric. A slap. "You filthy, perverted priest!"_

_"Miss Solange, I keep telling you, I'm not a priest anymore."_

_"It doesn't matter, you lecher! If you want to keep that damned hand on your arm, you'd best keep it off my rear!"_

_Sebastien, for once, wisely kept his comments to himself. He sympathized with Maurice; Solange was a beautiful woman, with dark hair and brilliant brown eyes, eyes that seemed almost red when she was angry. Like now._

_"It's cursed, I'm telling you, Miss Solange, you must believe me!"_

_"I'm going to curse you to the frozen center of hell if you don't stop groping me!"_

_Another typical day at the coffeehouse. Maurice, who had been expelled from the Dominicans because of his unfortunate sexual proclivities, had more or less forsaken religion altogether in favor of the new, scientific way of looking at the world. He had been the second son of a noble family; his elder brother had been murdered during the Great Fear in 1889. Maurice had outspokenly supported the National Assembly and the Tennis Court Oath, and thus escaped his brother's fate, making him the heir to a considerable fortune. _

_Sebastien had once asked him why he supported what was, after all, mainly a bourgeois cause. Maurice had nodded toward a pretty girl in the corner of the coffeehouse they had been sitting in, and had replied, "Because she does."_

_Solange, the pretty girl in question, had been alone in the world but for a mad younger brother, who even now rotted away in the asylum at Bicetre, not far from Paris. No one knew why, or what had triggered his insanity, but he had murdered his entire family, except Solange. She escaped. Barely. And she bore the scars of that night on her body and her soul._

_At any rate, robbed of her family and virtually penniless, she easily could have wound up on the streets. But for a strong character, there is always hope, and Solange was nothing if not strong. She found work serving sweets and coffee at the coffeehouse, and, listening to the idealistic tirades and monologues of the philosophes who frequented it, had thrown her lot with that of the National Assembly, in hopes of a brighter future. One of the young philosophes who drank his coffee there had fallen in love with her._

_And so Maurice had thrown his lot in with her._

_And because Maurice had joined her in her cause and because he happened to be Sebastien's dearest friend, Sebastien had also joined the throngs of revolutionaries who were going to make the world a better place. _

_He wasn't an idealist. He hadn't really believed a constitutional monarchy would do any better than an absolutist one had, and he didn't think that anything that set classes against one another could end well. He hadn't been happy about it, but it was a dangerous game, and as frustrated as he was with Solange's idealism and Maurice's blind faith in her beliefs, he wasn't the kind of person to abandon friends._

"_Did you hear about Marat?" Maurice was asking, suddenly serious._

"_Of course, Maurice, I work in a coffeehouse. It's frightening that it's gone so far."_

_Sebastien growled in exasperation. "Maurice, I keep telling you it's time to go. They're killing their own, Jacobins against Girondins; they'll have no problem finding a reason to take you to the guillotine. That's what got Corday in a twist, that's why Marat's dead."_

_Maurice was generally an easy-going sort of fellow. However, he and Sebastien had been over this point a million times, and he was sick of it._

"_I'm not leaving France, Sebastien! Or Paris, for that matter. They have no reason to come after me. I'm a little afraid of how far the Committee has gone – everyone is! But I'm loyal to the Constitution and the Convention." He set his jaw stubbornly._

_Sebastien opened his mouth to berate his friend for his pig-headedness, but Solange beat him to it._

"_They killed the king. And there's talk of killing the queen as well," Solange murmured, somber and quiet. "Based on rumors only. I'm starting to think that Sebastien's right, Maurice. You two should take a holiday to England. Or perhaps Germany. Somewhere safe." _

_Sebastien gestured roughly at her. "See?" he demanded._

"_You too, Solange?" Maurice asked, staring at her in disbelief._

"_It's getting too dangerous. You should go. Both of you." She looked at her hands._

"_We'd take you with us, of course, my dear Solange," Maurice assured her, "if we left at all." This last was followed with a nasty glare at Sebastien. _

"_A single woman traveling with two men?" Solange exclaimed, snapping her head up and fixing a glare on Maurice. "Do you realize how that would look?"_

"_You shouldn't come as a single woman," Maurice agreed thoughtfully, pursing his lips._

"_Ha. If you think I would pose as your wife or mistress or whatever, you'd better think again, priest."_

_Sebastien made a slight excusatory gesture and removed himself from the table. Maurice had been talking about this for awhile, and, as a good friend, Sebastien thought the ex-priest and the pretty coffeehouse girl should have some privacy._

_So he stationed himself just around a corner, close enough to see and hear, but out of sight._

"_I'm not suggesting any such of a thing," Maurice was replying. _

_Solange gave him a funny look. "Then what are you saying?"_

"_I'm saying that you should marry me."_

_Solange started, and then laughed. "So people won't talk if we happened to leave the city together? That's not much of a reason to get married, Maurice."_

"_That's not why I want you to marry me, Solange. Although it's true that it's probably the only way I could convince you to come with us, and I certainly couldn't leave without you." _

_Solange evidently couldn't think of any response, taken aback by the seriousness in Maurice's tone and the intensity of his gaze._

_She sat absolutely still, watching him._

_He waited patiently._

"_But…" she said slowly, "why?"_

_His expression was unreadable. "Because I can't imagine being anywhere that you're not."_

"_Maurice…"_

"_Tell me you don't love me, Solange. Tell me you don't want to marry me. I'll never bring up any of this again," he promised. He reached out to touch her face. "Only tell me the truth."_

_He and Solange were married two weeks later, and a week after that, the three left France for Prussia._

_Sebastien stood with Maurice during the ceremony. He remembered fondly the stupid grin on his friend's face and the pretty blush that painted the bride's cheeks. He remembered the surreptitious hand that snuck down her back and the fact that it was met with no resistance with amusement. He remembered Solange smiling and crying and laughing all at the same time, and thinking that Maurice was a very lucky man._

_But what he remembered most was the queer sense that he'd seen all of it before._

They had been happy in Prussia, despite the fact that their native country was at war with their new home. Scarcely a week had passed before Solange announced that she was expecting a child, much to Maurice's delight, and thereafter she was much too busy raising her twin sons – who were swiftly followed by their sister – to worry about France. Sebastien, like Maurice, was independently wealthy, and spoke fluent German, so setting up new lives had been relatively easy to do. They'd bought townhouses in Marienburg, and Sebastien was a frequent visitor to the bustling St. Julian household. The forceful nature that intimidated most adults only made the children laugh, as they knew their irritable friend to be more bark than bite. And they were all very happy.

When Shippou came to wake Sebastien from his ten-year dream, Inuyasha made the difficult decision to remain with Maurice and Solange for as long as he could. It probably wasn't a wise choice, considering that only thirty-five years remained in what Shippou called his "margin of error," but he chose to stay anyway. He had been alone for such a very long time.

He stayed there in Prussia for another eight years with Solange and Maurice and their three children, Cesar, Chevalier, and Adorlee. Shippo showed up every couple of years to subtly alter the illusion that hid his half-demon form behind a human façade, carefully aging his appearance. Eventually, however, he had to leave. Only twenty-seven years divided him from the fulfillment of Naraku's curse, and, having once encountered Miroku and Sango's souls, he came to believe he would meet them again. When Shippou eventually told him about their deaths, he visited Chevalier, the eldest of their twin boys, and asked for permission to return their remains to France. Generous and understanding, as his parents had been, Chevalier agreed. Inuyasha had collected a number of massive, well-shaped quartz crystals in Sweden a number of years before; he reburied his friends at Montesquieu and surrounded their graves with the precious stones.

ooooo

"Hey, Inuyasha," Shippou called.

"What?"

"What's this?" He held up a miniature golden dog, affixed to a thick gold chain. It had been carefully packed into Inuyasha's treasure chest, near the surface, and the blue satin that covered it had evidently attracted the kitsune's eye.

"That's that thing Sesshoumaru gave me during at Compiegne," he shrugged, studiously avoiding looking at it longer than necessary.

"Compiegne? What was that, Thirty Years War? That's been awhile."

Inuyasha didn't answer.

"Was that when you were a doctor?" Shippou pressed.

"Yeah," he said finally. "When I got in trouble for helping soldiers on both sides."

"And he gave you this then?" Shippou asked curiously. "Why?"

"It's supposed to represent St. Roch. Patron saint of dogs," he explained shortly.

"Huh?"

"He helped plague victims and eventually caught it himself. No one recognized him when he finally went home, and they accused him of being a spy and put him in jail. Where he continued to care for sick prisoners until he died."

Shippou laughed. "So your little charm here basically means, 'nice guys finish last.' Typically Sesshoumaru. At least he got you out of prison." When Inuyasha didn't join in his laughter, Shippou quieted.

Sesshoumaru was a touchy issue. He'd made a number of brief appearances during the past three hundred years, but always when Inuyasha was under an illusion. He left little mementos with his younger brother to remind him when he woke that they had met. The dog was one of the earliest. Another was an astrolabe from his days in the Dutch East India Company, inscribed with the characters for Sesshoumaru's name, and that too lay hidden in the treasure chest. Several others had also mysteriously found their way into his stash of cherished possessions. The most recent, and the most puzzling, was a British military jacket made from the fur of the fire-rat.

_It really is beautiful here, Captain Shaw Yeardley thought to himself, squinting up at the towering pine trees that adorned the mountain ridges to the east. He nudged his mount into a slightly quicker pace. The Americans were on the move, and he needed to get the rest of the men to the fort before they caught up. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be._

_Gunfire sounded off in the distance, and Shaw wheeled his horse around, shouting orders at his subordinates and listening carefully to ascertain where the shots had been fired. They'd been outflanked, and if he couldn't turn the flank, the day was going to end very, very badly. _

_His lieutenant panicked and stumbled, blubbering incoherently, off his horse. Fuming and frustrated, Shaw abandoned his incompetent lieutenant and headed toward the sounds of battle. He had never been one to lead from the rear, and he wasn't about to start now._

_He found a young Scotsman he remembered as being relatively cool under fire and, more importantly, as having a penetrating sort of voice; he curtly informed the man that he'd been promoted to a lieutenancy and to kindly repeat what he said to the troops. With his own considerable grasp of the intricacies of modern warfare and the Scotsman's big mouth, he managed to turn the flank and fight off the smaller American contingent. However, in pure spite, the retreating Americans let loose a final curtain of bullets. And one of them struck Shaw's shoulder. _

_"Dinna wory, ser," his new lieutenant said confidently, reaching up to stabilize his wounded officer. "Oi'll get ye to th' fort, ser, oi will." _

_Cursing under his breath at the American barbarians, he allowed the Scotsman to take the reigns and lead his horse toward the fort, leaving a cheerful sergeant-major to direct the trembling lieutenant into some semblance of manhood and to get the troops the last few miles to the fort. He managed to stay awake long enough to see the physician before succumbing to the loss of blood._

_"General!" Shaw exclaimed when he awoke. He struggled to rise; the tall, aristocratic general neither attempted to help nor permitted him to remain in bed. Instead, the curiously golden-eyed man watched impassively as Shaw made his way to his feet and awkwardly saluted. When he had done so, the general nodded his acknowledgement and motioned for Shaw to seat himself._

_The general remained on his feet, and regarded him with a mixture of curiosity and disdain. _

_"Fourteen of your men were wounded, Captain," he said sternly._

_Shaw fought an urge to bow his head in shame. "Yes, sir," he admitted._

_"You were outflanked by thos, raucous, noisy, poorly trained Americans."_

_"Yes, sir."_

_The general stared at him, waiting for a reaction. Shaw gave him none, though he had to bite his tongue to prevent protesting. It could have happened to anybody, anybody at all, no matter how skilled. And he'd handled it to the best of his ability – superbly, in fact._

_"Yet none of your men are dead."_

_"Yes… sir?"_

_"You turned the flank and repelled the enemy without loosing a single soldier. I'm impressed, Captain. I confess, I did not believe you had the aptitude for organized warfare. I am not often wrong."_

_Shaw stared. Was he being insulted or complimented?_

"_I do not enjoy admitting to being wrong. I will recommend you for a promotion immediately. Do not disappoint me as a major, Captain." He held out a uniform coat, but not one like Shaw had ever seen. It was made of fur, and had been dyed red to match the redcoats of the other British troops._

"_The fur is especially strong, Captain. Be certain you don it before battle. It may afford you some minor protection." With that, the General gracefully swept from the room, leaving a very confused Shaw holding the strange red coat. _

But Inuyasha didn't tell Shippou about the coat. He was still trying to puzzle out Sesshoumaru's actions for himself.


	4. Reconciliation

Inuyasha doesn't belong to me.

I'm sorry it's taken so long to post this; I've been working on other stories. I hope you like this one; I'm a big fan of Sesshy/Inu brotherly fluff. Enjoy, whether you review or not:)

RECONCILIATION

"Dammit!" Isaiah Tait buried his face in a beat up pillow. The shelling wasn't especially close, but it was loud, and sleep proved impossible amid the periodic explosions.

"Relax, Tait." Bob Wheeler drawled lazily from the bunk across from him. "It's not going to stop just because you cuss at it."

A heavy boot hit the wall four inches from Wheeler's face.

"It could be worse," Wheeler went on, ignoring the childish display. If Isaiah had meant to hit him, he would have. "A week of real beds and decent food, and out of the fucking fox holes? It's not as if we haven't slept through worse."

"It's different, Bob, and you know it," Jess Barlow mused from a top bunk. "Out there, you sleep cuz you're too fucking tired to stay awake, or you don't sleep at all cuz the idea that you won't wake up scares you shitless. Not the same."

There was an uncomfortable silence. Barlow was like that sometimes; he said what you were thinking and didn't have the guts to say, and nobody ever quite knew how to answer him. At eighteen and a half, he was the baby of the group, and everyone had a secret soft spot for him. They more or less kept one eye cocked on him when they were 'out there,' just to be sure he was as safe as he could be.

"Peter Landry's brother died yesterday. Gangrene." Will Patterson broke the silence, holding up a letter. Landry and Patterson had been good friends before Landry'd been sent home with shrapnel in both legs. "Poor bastard."

"My brother's too young, thank God. We weren't ever real close, mind you. But I still wouldn't want him to see this kind of shit." Wheeler lit a cigarette; ignored the ribbing from the man above him. "How 'bout you, Tait? You got brothers?"

"Nah. Always wanted one, though." He lay stretched out on a top bunk, staring at the ceiling.

"What the hell for? Trust me," Wheeler said emphatically, "brothers are more trouble than they're worth. Younger ones, 'specially. Always the pride and joy of the family, and nothing but a pain in the ass for us older sibs."

From the bunk below Tait, a deep, quiet voice questioned, "Did you want an older or younger brother, Isaiah?"

"Older, I think." He dropped his head down over the side of the bunk to view the man who'd spoken.

Most people automatically assumed he and Samuel Tait were brothers – same name, similar features. But they carried themselves differently, they spoke differently, and very few people labored under the misapprehension very long. Isaiah was a hothead, and the other, slightly older Tait never lost his cool. Despite that, they'd come to be pretty good friends during their tour together and were rarely apart.

Something akin to a smirk crossed Samuel's face. "Why? To protect you? Do you need a babysitter, Isaiah?"

"No, jackass." He heaved himself back up into his bunk, stretched out again. "Just…" he hesitated. "There were a lot of things I had to figure out for myself." He frowned, tried to find a way to explain himself. "My dad died when I was real little. It just would have been nice for someone to have taught me how to throw a punch, or shave, or pick up girls. All that kind of stuff." He flushed, not sure if he'd revealed too much in this testosterone-filled barrack.

"You could use a little help with the girls," Wheeler joked from across the room. A second boot hit the wall next to him. Again, he didn't flinch. He took a long last drag of his cigarette and sat up from his reclining position. "Smart move, dumbass. You're out of ammo, now, aren't ya, buddy?"

Two boots sped across the room toward Isaiah's bunk. Samuel shot out of his bunk and snatched both out of the air. Like lightning, he sent them on new trajectories: one at Isaiah's head, one at Wheeler. Both found their mark, and left laughably clear impressions on both men's foreheads.

"That's enough of that." With great dignity, Samuel retrieved the boots and deposited them at Isaiah's feet.

Wheeler and Isaiah had shoved themselves out of bed and were about to attack the man with the deadly aim, when a weary-looking lieutenant tramped in out of the rain. He viewed their antics with fatigued disinterest, and, evidently deciding that it wasn't worth chewing them out over, waited for the soldiers to come to attention.

"New orders, boys. We're heading back out. There's a new offensive being launched Wednesday; we're a part of it. So pack up and get what sleep you can. That's all." He turned and departed back into the rain.

The Taits shared a serious look.

"Guess we'll pick this up later, Samuel."

Samuel nodded curtly. Isaiah began to scrounge around under the bunk for his things; Samuel's were already neatly arranged and ready to go. Suddenly Samuel was kneeling beside him, helping his gather his scattered possessions. Isaiah flashed him a rueful smile, and was answered by a long-suffering shake of Samuel's head.

"I know, you told me to pick up yesterday." Samuel looked at him impassively before sighing and throwing a soft punch at his jaw.

"Idiot."

ooooo

It was never going to stop raining.

For two days straight, the rain had pooled in Isaiah's foxhole. His boots were sunk into the freezing mud almost constantly, and his hands and fingers were numb with cold. Samuel crawled over every few hours or so, ducking in only briefly, never saying a word. With the ever-present threat of a shelling, Isaiah worried about him. But it was something Samuel had done almost from the beginning of their friendship, and Isaiah had stopped arguing with him about it. In fact, the little check-ins had become so routine that Isaiah began to worry if he hadn't seen the other Tait in more than four or five hours.

It was just about time for another when the shelling began.

They weren't close enough to actually lay down fire on the Germans, so the soldiers kept to their foxholes and tried to ignore the whirrs, whistles, and explosions that heralded the arrival of mortars. Every now and again, a horrible shriek split the night, and everyone knew someone had been hit, maybe fatally. How many never got a chance to scream was debatable, but no one ever discussed it.

A white face appeared over Isaiah's head.

"Shit!" He thrust an arm upward and dragged Samuel into the hole with him. "What the hell were you thinking?"

Samuel drew his knees up to his breast in the now-very-cramped space, unperturbed as always. "I was already outside of my hole; yours was closer."

Furious but helpless to do anything about it, Isaiah buried his face in his hands. He looked up, scowling, running his fingers through his short black hair. "One of these days, you're not going to make it, you know."

"I highly doubt that."

"You're not fucking invincible, Samuel!" Isaiah didn't scare easily. But the thought of Samuel crawling through the mud under heavy mortar fire frightened him. Badly.

Samuel considered that. "No, I suppose not." He leaned against the side of the hole, and didn't seem to mind at all that he was sitting in four inches of muddy water. He did seem slightly surprised when Isaiah's fist connected with his jaw.

"Is this really the appropriate time?" Samuel asked, raising his brows.

"You idiot! Don't you care at all that you could have been killed?"

"As I said, I highly doubt it."

"You almost gave me a heart attack, you sonovabitch!"

"Your concern is touching. But unnecessary."

"Stop being so fucking calm!" Isaiah was almost howling with frustration. "Do you have any fucking idea how many friends I've lost out here, you bastard? I don't want to lose another because you're too damn stupid to stay put!"

He glared at the other man for a moment before turning away.

"Friends." The word was spoken quietly, almost tentatively. And suddenly it occurred to Isaiah that Samuel didn't really have friends, at least, not besides Isaiah himself. He was quiet, he kept mostly to himself, and he regarded the interactions of the other men with a detached interest. Hell, maybe he didn't even know what friends were. Isaiah sighed resignedly.

"Yeah, jackass. Friends. I've lost a lot of them. I'd rather not lose you."

Samuel was looking at him queerly. "If you still feel that way in three years, look me up, won't you?"

"What're you talking about?"

"Don't forget." It was a strange request, but the uncharacteristic intensity in Samuel's eyes forestalled any questions from Isaiah, who just nodded uncertainly.

They sat quietly for several minutes, when without warning, Samuel's eyes went wide, preternaturally alert. Isaiah barely had time to process the expression before Samuel's fist came flying at him out of the blue, and he sank into a black silence.

When he awoke, he found himself lying on a cot in the med tent, covered in minor cuts and bruises, and one very nasty gash across his belly. Any deeper, and he'd probably have been gutted by whatever had ripped through his skin.

"Did ye fin'ly wake, then, love?" asked a cheery female voice, in a thick Cockney accent. She was young, and rather plain, but her eyes were a pretty cornflower blue, and her smile welcoming.

"I was with another soldier," he began, and felt a chill run up his spine as her face fell.

"Ah, love." She gestured toward the bed next to him. "He'll be headed home, and no two ways about it." Isaiah turned to look.

Where Samuel's right arm ought to have been, a mass of bloody bandages covered a useless stump.

He appeared to be sleeping; Isaiah knew better. In the three years of their friendship, he'd come to know the other Tait well enough to recognize real sleep from 'I-don't-feel-like-talking' shut-eye.

"What happened?" Isaiah demanded of the nurse.

"Well, ain't no one too sure about it. They found the pair of ye fifty yards from yer foxhole. As I understand it, ye were lying underneath t'other un, and whatever 'twas that ripped into you tore right t'rough 'is arm. Truth be told, yer prob'ly only around to see it acause of 'im taking the brunt o' the blow."

He didn't blame Samuel for not wanting to talk. Weakly pushing himself onto his side to face away from his friend, Isaiah tried not to cry.

ooooo

It was another three years before Isaiah Tait was absorbed into the broken stream of consciousness that was Inuyasha. It was an interesting awakening, because Inuyasha knew immediately what Samuel had been trying to tell him when he'd asked him to 'look him up.'

A Purple Heart waited for him at his castle. It had been delivered in a silver case, which was inscribed with two names.

One was Samuel Tait.

The other was Sesshoumaru.

A sheet of white paper bearing a phone number had been neatly folded and tucked away inside the case, beneath the medallion. But Inuyasha didn't call it.

Three days after his awakening, Inuyasha arrived in London, and began to walk toward the address he'd received from the operator. He'd dismissed the idea of a cab almost before it had occurred to him. He wanted the time to think.

Within the hour, he had come to Sesshoumaru's London townhouse, carrying his military-issue bag and the Purple Heart.

Sesshoumaru answered the door himself, for once dropping the human illusion he'd presented to Inuyasha in the past.

Golden eyes regarded him coolly as he held up the award.

Without preamble, and trying desperately to avoid looking at Sesshoumaru's once-again-missing right arm, he began. "You've given me a number of things over the years. But I can't take this. This belongs to you."

Sesshoumaru opened the door wider, wordlessly inviting his brother in, and closed it softly behind him. A primly dressed maid waited in the foyer.

"Coffee, gentlemen?" Sesshoumaru glanced at Inuyasha, who nodded gratefully.

Sesshoumaru led the way into a large, surprisingly comfortable parlor. He took a seat in a big, brown leather armchair, and gestured for Inuyasha to seat himself in the identical chair opposite it. They were near the fire; after the damp, cold walk through London, he appreciated the warmth.

"You came."

Inuyasha had been extremely uneasy, but he began to relax. Through Sesshoumaru's coolness, he detected the pleased surprise that Samuel had often tried to conceal.

"Like I said, I couldn't accept this." He started to hand the silver case to Sesshoumaru, who shook his head.

"That doesn't mean anything to me. I was only there…" he blinked. "It's unimportant."

"It's important to me that you have it." They stared at each other for several uncomfortable minutes. Finally, Sesshoumaru sighed and took the case. Opening it to display the medallion within, he stood to set it on the mantle.

The maid walked in with an elaborate silver coffee service.

"Shall I pour, sir?" Sesshoumaru shook his head and poured the coffee himself as she left the room.

He didn't offer cream or sugar. There was no need to; Samuel and Isaiah had always taken their coffee black.

"I'm not very good at this, Sesshoumaru." Inuyasha stared into his cup, saw his shadowy reflection shimmer in the steamy brown liquid.

"Neither am I."

The admission surprised Inuyasha, and he flashed a rueful grin at his elder brother. Something like humor crept into Sesshoumaru's eyes. "To be perfectly frank with you, I don't think I could have taught you how to throw a punch any better than you already do. And I never had to shave, so I couldn't have helped you there, either."

His eyes slipped out of focus as he considered. "But Wheeler was correct about your needing help with females. That girl won't be born for another thirty or forty years, though." A delicate huff. "I'd probably need all of that time to teach a lack-witted half-breed like you anything."

Inuyasha felt a slow grin spread across his face. It was met with a small, but genuine, answering smile.


	5. The Exchange Student

You know the drill -- not my world, just my playground.

The Exchange Student

"Sesshoumaru!"

The demon lord shook his head, eyes a mystery. "I agree with him, Inuyasha."

"He's supposed to be her friend!" Inuyasha's tirade had begun half an hour before, and showed no signs of slowing.

"I _am_ her friend," Shippo retorted. Green flames flicked irritably from his fingertips. "That's why I'm doing this, you stupid oaf! This is best. Trust me." A wicked smile curled the corners of his lips as his eyes narrowed, and he began the incantation that would drop Inuyasha into yet another illusory life.

"Shippo! Damn you!" But the fuzzy black softness that preceded the first breath of each of Inuyasha's incarnations descended upon him, and his anger was swallowed by the darkness.

* * *

It was a perfect day. Warm and sunny, but not uncomfortably humid, a brutal summer had peaked and was now slipping into a more forgiving autumn. It was still early though, and summer's blooms still fluttered excitedly in the breeze. Everywhere, freshmen were digging through heaps of bathroom towels, comforters, clothes, cleaning supplies, plastic dishes, and everything else every dorm room checklist delineates. A lazy grin warmed Shane's mouth as he watched the kids struggle with their hampers and butterfly chairs, computer monitors and unmarked – probably hastily packed – cardboard boxes. Five years ago. Sometimes it felt like five decades – sometimes like five seconds.

Now working on his master's degree in literature, Shane had long since moved off-campus. He'd discovered early on that after a life at his brother's mansion, the dinky dorm rooms were confining and dirty, and he'd left as soon as the university had permitted it.

Only to return at the behest of his best friend, the Southern charmer who'd befriended him during American History I. Maverick was a nice guy, and Shane always had a good time with him. But he had one fatal weakness.

Ladies. In particular, ladies' derrieres.

Which was why, though they'd begun their four-year tracks together, Maverick would graduate with his bachelor's in religion a semester behind Shane. Evidently the school could suspend or even terminate a student's enrollment if someone filed a sexual harassment suit against them. His smooth-talking gallantry managed to mitigate his punishment to a semester's suspension with a year's probationary period to follow.

Shane's grin widened as he saw Maverick stumble up the stairs after the dark-headed girl who had laid to rest Shane's fears for Maverick's future. Sonja was a beautiful girl, a year younger than Shane, and whom Maverick had fallen for three years prior. How such a pretty thing wound up running with Shane and Maverick was anybody's guess. She was a real sweetheart – the quiet type, always politely reserved – and as such, an odd counter to the loudmouthed Shane and the smooth, sweet-talking Maverick. Still, three years of shared test-anxiety, coffee-driven all-nighters, bitch-about-your-professor sessions, and general college drama had cemented the friendship.

Shane closed his eyes. Five, four, three, two, one.

Skin makes a terrible, snapping sound when suddenly assaulted by skin. The half-Japanese grad student snorted in an attempt to conceal his laughter. _And… Pervert!_ he thought.

"Pervert!" Sonja shrieked, to Shane's satisfaction. A number of freshmen looked up from their jam-packed cars to their suddenly-worried parents.

Shit. He and Sonja had forgotten about Maverick's probation. Jerk was always needing somebody to cover his ass. Shane headed up the stairs after his friends.

"Send us your virgins!" he called loudly to the crowd, grinning broadly and winking unabashedly at a pretty teen.

The kids settled down; this was all good college fun. Even the parents relaxed a little.

Maverick flashed him a brilliant grin and began to laugh as the red hand-print faded from his face. Sonja immediately recognized her mistake, and she began to laugh as well. Before long, everyone had returned to their unpacking.

"Where's your car, Sonja?" He'd come to help her unload her stuff, but he didn't see her little orange Bug anywhere.

"Behind that big red SUV, the Ford, see?" She pointed. "I've got to get my key first. Be right back!"

"Sonja!" She'd already taken off into the building, but she leaned out the doorway to hear. "What's your room number, honey? We'll start bringing stuff up!"

"Four eleven!" She dropped her hold on the door and disappeared inside.

"Naturally she'd be on the fourth floor," Maverick groused once she was out of earshot, heading towards the SUV that obscured their view of the Bug.

" 'Course."

They moved across the hot parking lot as quickly as possible, because even a comfortable heat becomes unbearable over black asphalt. They found the Bug and popped the trunk, grabbing frilly pink girly stuff before slamming it shut again.

Between the three of them, it only took about three trips to empty the Bug and fill Sonja's room.

"You didn't need help unpacking, did you, Sonja?" Shane asked reluctantly. He tried to be a nice guy, most of the time, but it was a known fact that Shane had little patience and a short fuse. The endless stream of fussy freshmen running into him on the stairs had wrecked his desire to be helpful, and now he just wanted to hit the caff for dinner.

She waved him off. "I do want to rearrange the furniture; evidently my roommate isn't coming, so I've got the place to myself this semester. But later. I'm about sick of these rude little brats." She smiled ruefully. "What do you want to bet they keep me up all night long?"

"I don't believe I'll take that bet, sugar." Maverick leaned against the window-sill, and smiled suggestively. "You know you're always welcome to come to the apartment if you can't sleep."

Sonja and Shane both threw a dirty look at him.

He sighed. "You try to be nice to people."

"Let's just get some food, huh?" Shane's stomach had started growling at him, protesting its empty state.

"Yeah, okay."

They filed out into the hall, waited for Sonja to lock her door, and pulled open the door to the stairway, which was right across from Sonja's room. Below on the stairwell, Shane could see a dark head over the top of a laundry basket piled high with pale pink sheets and a white down comforter with coordinating pink ribbons. It wasn't unlike the prissy feminine trappings that passed for décor in Sonja's room.

The stairs were narrow, so the trio waited on a landing for the girl to pass them. She obviously couldn't see anything but the next stair, and Shane, Maverick, and Sonja were careful to stay well out of her way.

Everything would have been alright if Maverick had kept his mouth shut. But the girl had a pretty, lithe figure, and though the idiot had learned his lesson about handling behinds that didn't belong to him, he couldn't help commenting on how nicely the girl's slim black jeans accentuated her rear end.

She turned to glare at him, like any girl would.

A sudden jolt rocked the pit of Shane's stomach, like recognition, though he was positive he'd remember clearly having met someone like her.

She was beautiful. An exchange student, most likely – Japanese, he was certain. His late father had been Japanese, and he and Sesshoumaru had spent a good deal of time on the islands. Her eyes were odd, pretty, definitely, but unusual, a silvery blue color that shifted between steely gray and azure as her mood changed from anger to bewilderment. In her confusion, she had completely failed to acknowledge his presence, or Sonja's.

No, she was staring at Maverick as if she were going to be sick. She'd seemed angry enough when she'd first turned to look at him, but pain and shock now vied for control of her pretty face. Pain won; she shrank into herself as if deeply wounded.

Shane started for her, puzzled. His first thought at her sudden transformation had been that she might have been victimized by some perv with a thing for asses – why he thought that, he couldn't say – but it was clear that such wasn't the case. She recognized Maverick, plain as day.

But Maverick looked every bit as taken aback as Shane felt. He was used to rejection, to being cursed or laughed at or flirted back with. But his fun and games had never resulted in such terrible dismay, and the girl obviously knew him.

Sonja beat Shane.

"I'm sorry, miss, he can be so inappropriate at times, and –" She stopped short as the girl's eyes widened. Dismay threatened to become hysteria.

Shane was a simple guy. It didn't take much to make him happy – but it didn't take much to piss him off, either. Something was emotionally screwed up with this kid, and he didn't know how to handle it. And he _hated_ not knowing what to do.

"Shit. He's not going to hurt you, girl." His voice came out as a cruel snarl, and he inwardly winced at the unintentional harshness of his tone.

She froze, and every trace of emotion fled her face. Absolutely white, she turned to face him, scarcely breathing, terrified.

Shane barely caught her as she tumbled backward in a dead faint. He cursed, picked her up, and headed back toward Sonja's dorm room. Sonja tossed her keys to Maverick and gathered the items that had fallen from the strange girl's laundry basket before following her friends up.

Shane settled his armful onto the bed, and was stunned to see the glittering of tears at the inside corners of her eyes. She breathed something that sounded like the Japanese word for dog, and opened her eyes.

"The hell?"

"Leave her alone, Shane," Maverick drawled. "She's upset enough without having to look at your ugly mug." Shane glowered at him, but moved away.

"Sh.. Shane?" The girl swallowed hard.

"Don't let him bother you, honey. He's more bark than bite." A slow Southern grin, the one that kept Sonja with him despite his wandering eyes, the one that kept him in school, spread across his face.

She shot a brief glance at Shane, and immediately looked away, back to Maverick. "And you…?"

"Maverick. The stunner over there's my girlfriend, Sonja, so you shouldn't worry too much about that comment back on the stairs. I just appreciate a pretty woman, that's all." He grinned again.

"Must you?" Sonja sat beside the girl on the bed. "I'm sorry if we frightened you, but to be fair, I don't think the sight of our faces has ever caused anyone to faint before." She smiled reassuringly.

Shane scowled from the windowsill he'd settled against. Something about the girl and her pained, dawn-sky eyes made him very nervous, and he didn't like it.

"I'm so sorry," she murmured, still looking very confused and upset. "I just… I…" She caught her lower lip in her teeth and looked at her hands. "My basket…?" Sonja brought it to her. She slid a slim hand into the voluminous linens and withdrew a picture album. "Here," she whispered.

Sonja looked down at it and started with surprise. "Oh, my God."

Maverick joined her. He said nothing, but he didn't have to. His expression spoke volumes.

Shane leaned over to get a glimpse himself.

It was at a funny angle, as though whoever had taken it had been very close to the ground and pointing the camera upward. But the people in the photo were clearly visible.

There was the girl, except she was wearing a sunny smile and a short-skirted Japanese school uniform. And beside her were the three people who now sat beside her on Sonja's bed.

Well, not exactly. But close. A pretty woman who could have passed for Sonja's sister – twin, even – knelt on the ground, polishing what looked like an enormous boomerang. Beside her, dressed in the robes of a Buddhist monk, sat the spitting image of Maverick, only with a little tail at the nape of his neck. Even their earrings were similar. And behind him, scowling terribly, stood someone who looked a hell of a lot like Shane himself. Except the guy in the photo wore some goofy looking cat ears and had long, tangled silver hair. Eyes were off, too, a weird golden color.

"Who are these people?" Maverick demanded, astonished.

"They were my friends." The girl closed the album and hugged it close.

"You hear about people meeting their doppelgangers, but three at a time?" Sonja marveled. "We should meet them in person!"

The girl shook her head, not meeting any of their gazes. "They died when I was in high school." Shane looked away uncomfortably, and an awkward pause followed the bombshell.

"Poor thing," Sonja breathed. "No wonder you looked like you'd seen a ghost." She reached out and settled a tentative hand on the girl's shoulder.

"We'll leave you alone, if that would be better for you," Maverick said gently.

"They're gone. Whether we leave or not isn't going to make much difference." Sonja looked up at Shane in disbelief, and Maverick's mouth tightened angrily.

He couldn't help it, even though the hurt in her eyes accused him, even though he regretted the words as soon as he'd said them. Ever since first catching sight of him on the landing, she had conscientiously avoided looking at him; it was as if his very existence was painful to her, and the queerness of the situation rubbed him wrong. And he dealt with awkwardness the same way he dealt with frustration and exhaustion – he turned into a complete ass.

"Shane," Maverick said warningly.

"No, he's right. It's over and in the past, now. I'm sorry for the trouble." Those tears Shane had seen earlier were blinked away resolutely. She smiled, albeit somewhat unsteadily. "So. You're… Sonja? Is that what he said? Thank you for getting my things; I keep hearing stories about people getting their stuff stolen."

"It's not as bad as they make it out to be, but there's a few bad apples in any barrel. Is your room up here, too? I bet Maverick or Shane would carry your stuff for you. They can be smart-mouthed at times, but they're usually pretty sweet."

She hesitated, but Maverick, gentleman that he was, immediately rose to his feet and hoisted her basket. "Where to?"

"Four nineteen," she conceded diffidently, hugging herself as though she were cold, although the room was stale and muggy from the summer's disuse.

"Door open?" She nodded, exhaling a shaky breath.

"Yes, it should be."

"I'll be right back then." With his usual charm, he smiled at the ladies and strode purposefully out of Sonja's room.

"Are you hungry?" Sonja asked suddenly. Her hand dropped from the girl's shoulder to hold one of the small hands folded in her lap.

"I… I could eat." She stared at the hand holding hers.

_No_, Shane mouthed behind her, waving his hands at Sonja. Sonja's dark, almost reddish eyes narrowed briefly in warning, and he shot her a dirty look.

"Have you been to the caff yet?" Sonja asked, turning her attention back to the exchange student.

"Caff?" The word wasn't familiar to her.

"Cafeteria."

"Oh. No. Isn't it off that way?" She gestured vaguely to her left.

Sonja smiled. "More like that way," she corrected, pointing in the opposite direction. The girl smiled ruefully.

"I'll never learn."

"Oh, yes, you will. It just takes a little time. And a few wrong turns." Sonja's voice was kind, as always, and her careful tactfulness alleviated the tension in the room Shane could feel his own aggravation dissipating.

"It does get better," he said gruffly, earning for himself a knowing, approving smile from Sonja.

"Come with us and eat," Sonja urged. "You've had a big shock, but I'm sure that once you get to know us, once you see how different we are from your old friends, it will get easier."

The girl bit her lip anxiously, and said nothing.

"You're going to be seeing us around a lot, since you live on Sonja's floor," Shane pointed out irritably. Now that the awkwardness had eased a bit, he felt a little more forgiving, considering her understandable shock, but he was still hungry and irked with the noisy freshmen down the hall. "You might as well start trying to get used to us."

There was that look again, that unspeakably anguished memory. But even as he debated apologizing for his lack of sensitivity – anything to make her stop looking like she was on the verge of tears – she drew her shoulders back and smiled bravely, even managed to look at him full in the face.

"You're absolutely right, both of you. If you don't mind, I think I will eat with you."

Maverick popped back in. "You're coming to the caff with us?" He smiled beatifically. "Well that's great, as long as I get to sit between you and Sonja. Two pretty faces are better …"

Whatever he had been going to say was cut off by the sassy black pump Sonja hurled at him.


	6. Kagome

Not mine, as always.

Kagome 

She still was having trouble looking at him. When he spoke, she turned an ear toward him or cast him a sidelong glance, but never did she look directly at him if she could avoid it. The few times he had addressed her directly, he could see her breath catch in her chest as she steeled herself to meet his gaze, and when she did, it was as if something inside her wilted. Sonja's generous, patient nature slowly drew the girl out of her shell, and Maverick's dry humor and charming smile visibly put her at ease.

But she wouldn't look at Shane.

Weird, weird, weird. He knew exactly what it was, too, why she put him so on edge. Everything about her was unnervingly familiar – especially the way she wouldn't look at him. It made him feel guilty, but he couldn't have said why. It wasn't his fault he looked like her dead friend.

But that wasn't it at all. That wasn't what made him feel guilty, that he'd reminded her of someone she lost. It felt as though he'd hurt her somehow, and something inside of him accused him relentlessly for having done so.

He didn't even know her. Couldn't have betrayed her. But the feeling that he had was hauntingly familiar.

Weird.

Weird, too, how the fluid motion of her chopsticks brought flashes of slim white hands and smiling lips to his mind. Weird how she shook her hair out of the way, and he knew – _he knew_ – the cut was wrong, it was too straight along the bottom edge. Weird how when she smiled, he knew it was at least partially faked, even though she concealed the falsity well.

But mostly it was weird that her reluctance to look at him felt so damnably familiar. As did the guilt that washed over him every time she met his eyes.

As he poked at his plate with his own chopsticks – an affectation he'd picked up during his years with Sesshoumaru in Japan, as he wielded a fork with equal dexterity – it occurred to him that she was slowly finding her footing with his friends, while she remained tentative and inhibited with him.

Sonja had said something in the room about how it would get easier once the girl could see the differences between her old friends and herself, Maverick, and Shane.

Perhaps she was acting so timid because he was behaving like the freak in the cat ears would have?

That was an unpleasant thought. He was being uncharacteristically belligerent and insensitive. No one would ever have accused him of being overly sweet-tempered or sociable, but he thought of himself as an okay kind of guy. It was true that she'd knocked him off-kilter, but that wasn't really a good enough reason for his sullenness.

He gnawed the inside of his cheek, thinking. If she'd been any other girl, anyone else Sonja and Maverick had taken a liking to, how would he have behaved?

Resolving to ignore the weirdness, he allowed his attention to wander back into the conversation.

"History? Really? That was Shane's minor; he ought to be able to help you out." Sonja smiled. "In fact," she continued, turning to Shane, "if any of his textbooks are still being used, I'm sure he'd be happy to lend them to you."

Shane forced a smile to his face. "Yeah. Unlike biology," he said, with a glance at Sonja, "most of the new editions of the history textbooks are just rewrites of the old ones. And there's only about six professors in the whole department who insist on having the newest versions."

She swallowed hard, and he stoically ignored it. "Arigato," she whispered, and then shook her head. "Thank you, I mean."

"Do itashi mashite." Her head jerked up in surprise, and he felt an ironic smile tug at his lips. "You're welcome, I mean."

"You speak Japanese."

"My dad was Japanese. Mom was an American exchange student."

"Was…?"

"They died when I was little." A little pang jumped in his gut; he set it aside with practiced ease. "It's just me and my brother, now."

She blinked rapidly. "You have a brother?"

"Older half-brother. Kind of a pain in the ass sometimes, but they tell me all older brothers are." Shane pushed his plate away and leaned back, a crooked smile stretching his mouth. Thoughts of Sesshoumaru were always tinged with both affection and aggravation, and he could never decide whether to grimace or smile when they crossed his mind.

"You," she hesitated, looking for an appropriate phrase, "you have a good relationship together?" she asked, dawn-sky eyes intense, as if the answer were somehow very important.

"Yeah, I guess we get along okay." Shane looked up. They'd redone the cafeteria last summer; the ceiling was now a deep blue color, lit with yellow pendent fixtures, and he considered it absorbedly. "He's really the only parent I've ever known, and I'm sure I wasn't the greatest kid in the world to have to get stuck with at only nineteen."

The answer curiously seemed to calm her. "My friend had an older half-brother," she said, looking at her plate. "But they… they were like enemies, mostly."

It was an odd word to use to describe sibling rivalry, but he figured it was just her immature grasp of the language that led her to it.

Sonja and Maverick had gotten lost in a discussion between themselves, leaving Shane more or less alone with the girl.

"Enemies, huh? Nah, I wouldn't say that. He annoys me, but I probably irritate him just as bad. We have different ways of doing things, that's all."

"Oh."

There was an awkward pause, and Shane groped for something to fill the silence.

"So you're a history major?"

"Yes."

"Minor?"

"I don't know yet."

He crossed his arms; she wasn't being very helpful, and he wasn't a great conversationalist. "Look out for Dr. Andrews – she's nice, but her tests are always crazy hard. And Dr. Karroway is exactly the opposite: a real asshole, but if you can stand him, his class is really, really easy." She nodded her acknowledgement.

_Help me out here, girl_, he thought to himself, with rising frustration. "Who are you taking this semester?" There, at least she couldn't answer yes, no, or I don't know.

"Dr. Johnson and Dr. Gerrald." Finally, she looked at him, without that awful catch in her breast. "Do you know them?"

"I had Dr. J. for World I. Nice guy. Easy class, you shouldn't have any trouble as long as you keep up with the reading. He likes pop quizzes." The memory of a few failed quizzes made him scowl, and his expression was rewarded with a slight smile. "Gerrald I never had, but everyone tells me he's kinda pompous. Real scholarly type. No sense of humor."

"That's not true," Sonja butted in. "He's just older, so no one expects him to crack a joke. And he is a little hard, so people don't like him. I got along with him just fine, though."

"That's because you're brilliant, beautiful," Maverick drawled, pulling one of Sonja's hands to his lips to kiss it.

The girl laughed a little, and there was something very bittersweet in the sound. "You two are very…" she blinked, and looked at Shane. "Kawaii?"

"Cute," he supplied with a grimace. "Disgustingly so, most of the time." She smiled at him.

Weird or no, she was very, very pretty when she smiled. His heart thudded in his chest, and a sudden flush crept over his cheeks. Kawaii – she was, definitely.

"You know what we should do, Shane," Maverick said with a bright, tooth-bearing grin, "is get together and jam for little Miss Japan over there. We haven't gotten to do it since last semester, but now that we're all back, we should give her a taste of real American culture, don't you think?"

As much as he resented the fact that Maverick had just invited the strange young woman to enter even more deeply into their little trio, he couldn't resist the invitation. It had been way, way too long since the three of them had really just let loose.

"Hmph. Whatever," he answered carelessly, which of course meant 'yes,' and both Maverick and Sonja knew it.

The pretty exchange student hadn't understood. "Jam? Like jelly?"

Shane laughed out loud at that, and she flushed with embarrassment. "No, honey, jam as in jam session – playing music," Maverick explained, wiggling his fingers in a decent air guitar solo.

That seemed to floor her for a moment, and they waited expectantly. "I… I would like to see you… have a jam," she said hesitantly, brows furrowed.

"No singing," Shane said, shooting a warning glare at Maverick.

"Aw, that's half the fun, Shane." Sonja drew her bottom lip into her teeth and opened her eyes wide. Although ostensibly the most serious of the three, Sonja had a killer puppy dog face. And she was never afraid to pull it out. "And you have such a pretty voice."

"Sonja," he growled irritably, "if you don't quit bringing that up, I swear…"

"Shane, buddy, you got out of that a long time ago, so just let it go already."

"Got out of what?" She tilted her head to the side, and what with the soft glow of the new lighting on her black hair, it wasn't just memory that caused him to flush and turn away.

"Shane actually started out with a minor in music," Sonja began, with a barely repressed grin. "He plays acoustic and electric guitars, and, even though he doesn't like to admit to it, he plays piano even better. But he found out pretty quickly that he didn't much care for the music department, and he left after only a semester."

She shook her head, not understanding.

"He kept getting hit on." Maverick sent him an amused look, and the color went even higher on Shane's cheeks.

"This is a bad thing?" She still didn't get it. Shane wanted to bury his face in his hands, but he merely continued staring into the distance off to his left.

"No, not really. Flattering, if you ask me. You've got to be a real looker and a great singer to get that much attention from the choir guys."

"Choir… guys...?" Finally it clicked in her head, and she blushed a little herself. "Poor Shane," she said, and there was the slightest hint of a tease in her voice.

"No singing," he repeated, amidst the laughter at the table. He flung a raw carrot from his chopsticks in Maverick's direction, but the gallant southerner ducked behind Sonja, who threw a french fry at Shane. Just before a full-scale food fight erupted, the little Japanese girl spoke up.

"Won't you please sing for me, Shane-san?" All three of them looked at her, surprised.

Something about the tentative way she said it made it impossible to refuse her. It was as if she had decided to risk just a little, to place a minute amount of trust in him over this small thing, and letting her down was inexplicably but undeniably out of the question.

"Hmph."

* * *

He almost never played his Gibson anymore. He only really used the acoustic for classical pieces, and he hadn't had time for that kind of solo work lately. But Maverick wanted to do an Eagles song – of course he did, he always did, tonight it was _Tequila Sunrise_ – and so Shane broke it out for the first time in almost six months. It was badly out of tune, but, like always, its twelve steel strings warmed quickly under his fingers. Surprised to find he'd missed the guitar so much, he considered forsaking his Strat entirely for the night. He couldn't, of course, some songs just required an electric, but the Gibson was a beautiful instrument, and he felt the old thrill he'd experienced the day he'd gotten her. It was an old instrument, a 'classic,' he liked to say, with figured mahogany on the back and sides, and Bear Claw Sitka spruce for the soundboard. Sesshoumaru had given it to him the day he started college. 

He played _Layla_ for her, the bluesy version, although he insisted Maverick sing the lyrics – the lower notes strained his tenor voice, and suited Maverick's baritone much more comfortably. He did sing _Dust in the Wind_, and _Wheel in the Sky_. And then Sonja got tired of the ballads, and demanded something a little more rowdy for her Flying V. And then they ground out a very nice rendition of _Pour Some Sugar on Me_, at least, until Maverick's not-so-surreptitious game of footsie got out of hand. Some Whitesnake, some Aerosmith, some Zeppelin. All in all, a pretty typical night for the three.

Except it wasn't just the three of them in the soundproofed room in the music building. There was someone else there, watching in wonder as they fooled around.

"You're all very good," she said when they'd paused to catch their breaths. "How did you all learn to play?"

Maverick shrugged. "High school band. We weren't very good, but thinking we were gave me lots of incentive to practice." He grinned lopsidedly and strummed out a bit of the intro to _Hotel California_.

"I've been playing ever since I was little," Sonja shrugged, resting her cheek along the neck of her guitar. "My mom taught me."

"I just kind of picked it up," Shane admitted. "My brother tried to indulge any time-consuming hobby I picked up, mostly to keep me out of his hair." It was probably a little true, but Sesshoumaru really had been pretty encouraging where Shane's music was concerned. Why was a mystery to him, but Sesshoumaru could be pretty cryptic at times.

"Well, you all play beautifully," she declared, and a pretty smile tugged at her mouth.

Maverick winked at her. "It helps having an appreciative audience."

High on the spirit of the moment, good vibes from classic music sounding through his veins, Shane was feeling generous. "Helps having a pretty audience."

Something sad clouded her face, but was quickly erased. "Arigato," she said quietly.

"Sing something with me, Maverick," Sonja said suddenly, giving the now flushing Shane a reason to look away.

"Mmmm… how about that Seether song?"

"Sure."

He began to strum thoughtfully. "Hmm…

"_I wanted you to know_

_That I love the way you laugh_

_I want to hold you high_

_And steal your pain away_

Maverick was looking at Sonja, and Sonja at Maverick, so neither saw the sudden tension that rose in her shoulders.

_I keep your photograph_

_And I know it serves me well_

_I want to hold you high_

_And steal your pain_

There was a heart-shaped locket around her neck, and he knew somehow he'd been aware of it all along. It was like everything else about her, alarmingly familiar. She grasped it now, eyes distant.

_Because I'm broken_

_When I'm open_

_And I don't feel right _

_When you're gone away_."

The song had a special significance for Maverick, and for Sonja. Sonja had lost her entire family to a terrible accident just before she started college. Maverick's father had mysteriously disappeared a few years before that, and he'd never known his mother. When they came to Berkeley, both had been totally alone in the world. Until they found each other, and Shane. He always felt somehow that he understood that kind of isolation, even though he knew Sesshoumaru had always been there for him, so it was impossible for him to really comprehend the depth of their loneliness.

Looking at the girl beside him, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she understood it just as well as they did.

Sonja picked up her part, her vibrant alto soaring easily into the range of a second soprano.

"_The worst is over now_

_And we can breathe again_

_I want to hold you high_

_You steal my pain away."_

She'd begun to tremble, and he could tell her teeth were clenched by the jump of muscle in her jaw. Her arms clamped tightly around her, a futile attempt to hide the shaking of her shoulders.

"_There's so much love to learn_

_And no one left to fight_

_I want to hold you high_

_And steal your pain."_

A solitary tear dripped slowly out of the inner corner of her left eye; she made no move to halt it. Still staring at some point beyond Shane's vision, she sat silently in her chair, absolutely still but for the uncontrollable tremor of repressed tears.

"_Because I'm broken_

_When I'm open_

_And I don't feel like_

_I am strong enough_

_Because I'm broken_

_When I'm lonesome_

_And I don't feel right_

_When you're gone away_."

Maverick caught the shine of water in her eyes, and stopped playing. "Are you okay?" he asked worriedly, setting his Firebird aside. Sonja quickly crossed the room to sit beside Shane.

"I'm sorry, sweetie, we didn't mean to make you cry." She reached over Shane's lap to pat the girl's hand. "Do you want to tell me about it? We can go back to my room; Shane and Maverick can get us a pizza or something while we talk – it'll be okay, don't cry." She crawled over Shane to wriggle in between him and the girl.

Shane gritted his teeth with frustration. Everything had been going so well. She'd finally seemed to relax, to accept them as ordinary, everyday people, to put aside their queer resemblance to her old friends. And now she looked absolutely broken. She wasn't even really crying, just trembling, mind somewhere else, tortured.

Her nails dug deeply into the soft skin of her arms, and something intangible but very, very real snapped as he saw the white pressure marks appear on the pale pink flesh.

"Fuck, Kagome. It's over. Get over it." His lips curled back in a snarl, a veritable snarl, and he growled the words low in his throat.

Like so many things he'd said and done today, it was completely out of character – and it felt completely like himself. The strangeness of it all hit him again, and he fled the tear and the nails in her skin and the horrible, horrible loneliness in her eyes, fled it and disguised the retreat as an angry stalk, because he couldn't let them see how deeply her pain affected him, because he didn't understand it himself, because he didn't want to have to try to explain it to someone else.

He had almost made it to his car when he was struck by the realization that she had never told him her name, and yet he'd known it as surely as he knew his own.

_Kagome._


	7. Little Girls and Oden

Not my world. Just my playground.

**LITTLE GIRLS AND ODEN**

Laundry basket. Photo album. Sheets.

Shane ran over every item of that girl's he'd come into contact with, trying to remember where he'd seen her name. At first, he thought perhaps he had glimpsed it, labeling some object or other as belonging to her. But try as he might, he couldn't remember where he'd seen it. In fact, he didn't even know how it would be spelled – Romanized.

Shane wasn't especially familiar with the Japanese written language. But he did know that Kagome's name would be written in hiragana, and that there were no kanji symbols for it.

It disturbed him.

It disturbed him so badly that he never actually managed to get out of the parking lot, although he did find his car and lock himself in.

Kagome, Kagome, Kagome. Where the hell did he know her from?

That had to be it, it had to. He must have met her sometime in their youth, sometime long…

_Sad, she looked so terribly sad._

_She was a pretty child, a little chubby perhaps, but with full red cheeks and lips and big gray dawn-sky eyes._

_Tears glittered in those pretty eyes, and he could almost have wept himself at the great effort she put forth to restrain them._

_She carried a handful of rather withered flowers. Neither the flowers nor the girl herself had stood up well to the rain, and Kenjiro began to make his way toward the tombstone she'd curled up against, pulling his raincoat off as he did so._

_"Where is your mother, little girl?" he asked gently, afraid of frightening her._

_"She doesn't know I'm here," the little girl answered. Rain mingled freely with her tears, so he couldn't be quite sure that she was still crying. He shrugged off the coat and draped it over her shoulders._

_"Why are you here alone?"_

_"I miss Daddy." There was a heartbreaking catch in her voice, and a massive lump rose in Kenjiro's throat. He knelt beside her._

_"Is this your daddy's grave?"_

_"Yes."_

_"I'm sure he's happy that you came to see him, but I bet he'd be upset if you made your mother worry."_

_It wasn't the right thing to say, and he regretted the mild rebuke immediately. Tears welled up in her eyes – evidently she hadn't been crying – and her plump lower lip began to tremble._

_"Now, now!" Taking hold of the raincoat, he pulled it up over her dripping black locks, holding it in place so that it shielded her from the rain._

_"What's your name, little girl?"_

_She sniffled, face half-hidden in the shadow of his raincoat. "Higurashi Kagome."_

_"Well, Miss Higurashi, where do you live? And how did you get here?"_

_"I walked."_

_He waited. "I walked from the shrine where I live. It's that way." Pointing a chubby little finger southwards, she looked up at him expectantly._

_He stood, and looking down the street, he could just make out the gates of a shrine in the rainy mist. "Come on, then." _

_He hoisted her up onto his hip, now completely soaked. It was a comfortable weight, and he wondered idly as he made his way out of the cemetery if, supposing he ever had kids, they would be as adorable as the little girl in his arms._

Shane shivered, despite the stifling summer warmth. The girl had been the exchange student; those eyes were a dead giveaway. But who the hell was Kenjiro?

Was Kenjiro his look-alike in the photograph?And even if he was, why was Shane remembering Kenjiro's experience with the little girl?

Kenjiro, Kenjiro. Jiro was a traditional name for the second born son… Ken… Ken often preceded those 'number' names, and meant 'golden.'

A sudden image of Sesshoumaru's odd golden eyes flashed before him, and he shivered again as another queer memory assaulted him.

_"I still think it's a bad idea."_

_"Tokyo's a big city. The odds of a chance encounter are minimal."_

_"That kind of shock could dispel the whole illusion, Sesshoumaru."_

_"She's only four. He probably wouldn't recognize her if he saw her."_

_"Bad idea. Very, very bad idea. It's not like he has time to wait for me to create a whole new world for him, Sesshoumaru. I'm glad you worked out your differences, but he really cut himself short on time."_

_"He hasn't seen her in five centuries. He only wants to be near her."_

_"Gah, you would have to say that. Fine. Just don't blame me if the whole thing goes straight to hell." _

Shane pulled his knees up to his chest, breathing hard. Sesshoumaru – Sesshoumaru he barely recognized, but no one else could pull off that high and mighty demeanor so well, and no one else had his brilliant amber eyes. But his hair had been long and silvery, and his ears were pointed, like those Star Trek aliens, and purple tattoos marred his face and arms.

And the other thing – God only knew what that was, the redhead with the pointy ears, just like the look-alike Sesshoumaru's. Whatever it was, it had a big, bushy red tail on its rear end.

But he did know that they were talking about him, or that Kenjiro person, or maybe the both of them. And he knew the four-year-old child that had them so concerned was the little girl in his memory. And _she_ was the same girl that had him so freaked out right now.

He shuddered yet again. What the hell was going on?

A sudden banging on his windows startled him, and he looked up to see a very upset Sonja slapping her palms against his beloved Pontiac GTO.

He rolled down his window.

"What the hellis going on here, Shane? How could you do that to her?" She shoved her face into the car with him, causing him to back away just a little. "You've been weird all day, but I have never, never seen you act like such an _asshole_. Not to anyone. How could you?"

He stared at her a moment, then grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her through the window into the cab with him. "Shane! _Shane_!"

Shane's car, like his guitar, was a classic, a 1965 GTO. At this particularly moment, he was less interested in its history than he was in its speed, however – zero to sixty in less than six seconds. He peeled out of the parking lot, much to Sonja's dismay, and careened into the road that ran along the campus's eastern boundary.

"Shane!" Sonja protested again.

"I am so fucked up, Sonja," he admitted, gunning the engine, finding an odd comfort in the horses below the hood. "And I have no fucking idea why."

She stared at him. "Just slow down, Shane."

Though his nerves craved action of some kind, he reluctantly pulled his foot away from the gas and shifted into a lower gear.

"Take a left here." Sonja pointed at a stoplight. He obliged her. "Go two blocks, and make a right," she instructed.

After a few more turns, he found himself at a diner.

Sonja pulled the slim strap of her purse over her shoulder. "Come, boy," she commanded, smiling wryly.

Too upset to argue, he did as he was told and followed her inside.

"We'll need two cups of coffee, cream, and a glass of water, please."

The waitress brought the requisite items to the out-of-the-way corner booth Sonja had selected.

"Now. You're all screwed up. I can see that. Now tell me what's gotten into you." She blew gently into her mug, and a plume of steam streamed over the lip.

"What happened to Kagome?" he asked, dodging the question.

"Maverick was going to take her back to my room. I'm not going to leave her alone until she gets an apology from you, mister."

He grunted a little, but hadn't expected anything less, not from Sonja.

"Now."

"I can't remember where I saw her name," he blurted.

"She told us at dinner, remember, she said…" Sonja's voice trailed off. "You went to get some more fries. Hmm. Well, you must have heard us using it."

"So why do I also know there are no kanji symbols for her name?" Shane stared into his own coffee cup.

Sonja blinked. "Shane…"

"When I got to the car, I had these weird… memories, almost. Except, I wasn't me – it was like I was watching them from someone else's perspective. And she was in them."

Sonja looked into her own cup. "When I first met Maverick," she said after a moment, very quietly, "I felt like I knew him."

"It's not – "

"Let me finish, Shane." Something in her voice stilled his objections. "I knew, from the minute I first saw him, that he was going to grope me. It was just a feeling I had. I also knew I was going to be with him for the rest of my life. I can't explain it; I've quit trying. But every now and again, he does something – some little thing, just a particular turn of his head or a movement of his hand – and it's like I'm in a whole other time, another place, and we're completely different people." She found his eyes. "Shane, he says the same thing happened to him when he met me."

"When I saw that monk in Kagome's picture, I thought I'd gone insane. I know – I _know_ – I've seen him before. Not Maverick. But that person. I feel like I could almost tell you his name, like it's on the tip of my tongue."

"What's happening, Sonja?" Shane hunched into the corner of the bench, resting against the wall. "She makes me so crazy."

"I don't know, Shane," Sonja admitted softly. "I do know that I got weird feelings around you when we first met, too, and that played out okay. Just stick it out, please? Things happen for a reason – I do believe that. Maybe she's supposed to meet us."

"I don't believe in that stuff, Sonja, you know that. All that reincarnation and karma and fate crap."

"I don't know that I do, either. But I know there are things I can't explain, that no one can explain. Maybe Kagome's one of them."

Shane took a sip of the coffee, but it was still too hot. "I just feel so _guilty_ around her! Like I really screwed something up. And I don't even know what it is!"

"Maybe the other guy really hurt her, and you're just picking up the feedback off that," Sonja suggested.

"Maybe."

"You still have to apologize to her, you know. Cuz you really did screw up tonight."

"Yeah."

Sonja stretched. "Do you want to get something to eat?"

His stomach growled his assent, and she called Maverick to see if he and Kagome wanted anything.

"He wants a burger and onion rings, surprise, surprise. And she didn't know what to get, so I guess we're – "

"Stopping at the all-night Japanese place on Fifth."

"What?"

Shane grimaced. "She likes oden."

"What the hell is oden, and how do you know she likes it?"

"Oden's a Japanese soupy dish – kinda fishy, it's got eggs… you put it in a daishi broth. And I have no idea how I know she likes it. But she does."


	8. Gestures

I'm sorry about the wait, everyone. I was married this past December, so life's been pretty crazy. But thank you, everyone who's stuck around even through the long waits between chapters. I really wish I deserved your loyalty. As always, Inuyasha belongs to Rumiko Takahashi.

**Gestures**

Sonja and Shane returned to Sonja's dorm room just a little past midnight, food in hand. When they arrived, they found Maverick cross-legged on the floor, strumming basic guitar chords. Kagome held Sonja's Flying V in her hands, trying, without much success, to imitate the sounds Maverick pulled from his own guitar. She flushed as they entered, and set the V down.

"Honey, you were doin' so good," Maverick scolded lightly, wearing his charmer's smile.

"It's okay, Maverick," she said, stumbling over the name a little. "Thank you, but maybe I am not a guitar player." She forced a smile and tried to avoid Shane's stare. "The only string I do well with is a bow-string."

"Like a violin?" Sonja asked brightly. "I never could manage a bow. I get too damn impatient with it – Maverick plays cello pretty well, though."

Kagome shook her head, but Shane answered for her. "I think she means a bow string as in a bow-and-arrow kind of bow, Sonja." Kagome paled, swallowed, and nodded, a short, almost frightened kind of movement. Shane didn't blame her. He was getting pretty frightened himself.

"Here." He thrust the oden at her almost sullenly, and could have cursed himself for the hesitancy with which she took it. It wasn't bad enough that he'd flipped out on her already twice today and knew things about her he had no business knowing, he was being an ass besides.

"You know what," he said quietly, taking the covered bowl back and setting it on the floor, "Never mind. Will you come here for a minute?"

Sonja nodded her approval, pleased he was finally going to make his apology. He offered the girl a hand, and when she took it, he pulled her to her feet. "Out here."

He led her into the hallway. It was surprisingly quiet; maybe the freshmen had decided to hit the sack early before the next day's classes. More likely they were all out partying somewhere.

"Look, I don't exactly know what's going on here," he began, examining the top of her dark head. She wasn't looking at him.

"But whatever it is, it doesn't excuse my behavior toward you. I apologize."

Her head snapped up, and her eyes narrowed with incredulity. "What?"

He scowled. "I said I was sorry, okay? This hasn't exactly been the greatest day of my life, either, you know. You…" He hesitated, and then decided against trying to explain himself.

"It doesn't matter," he said finally. "I haven't been myself today. And I'm sorry. I swear, I'm not usually such a jerk." He made himself smile, but he might as well have had fangs bared at her for all the warmth he could muster.

She stared at him, a strange kind of searching in her eyes. "I'm sure you are not, Shane." Folding her arms across her chest, she relaxed a little bit. "I'm not such a … crying baby?"

"Crybaby," he supplied. "I believe that."

She drew a deep breath and studied Sonja's door. "I really like oden. Thank you so much for bringing some to me."

The literature major in him couldn't help but smile at her awkward phrasing. "Not a problem." They shared an uncomfortable silence.

"Kagome." Her name shivered queerly down his back, but he tried to ignore it.

Her dawn-sky eyes locked on his, and for a weird moment he felt absolutely stripped of clothes, of name, of memory. "I would like to make it up to you, if you don't mind." The moment passed, leaving him breathless.

"I… I think that would be okay." Her tone was uncertain.

"Berkeley is a big campus. Maybe I could help you find your classes this week?" His stomach knotted up at willingly spending more time with this nerve-wracking girl, but he owed her more than a simple apology. Besides, like he'd told her, they would probably be seeing a lot of each other. It would be better to get the weirdness over with quickly.

Her brow furrowed, and her nose wrinkled. "Will not helping me make you be late to your classes?"

"My classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays don't begin until six in the evening. Night owl," he explained.

The puzzled look didn't fade. "Owl? Is that a bird?"

He laughed in spite of himself at her expression. _Kawaii_. " 'Night owl.' It means, someone who likes being up late at night."

"Oh." She blushed a little bit.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, in Japanese, "I don't ever really practice my Dad's language. I'd hate to lose it." He raised his brows with the suggestion.

Looking relieved and more than a little pleased, she nodded. "Arigato."

The turn of her pretty mouth left him a little tongue-tied, and he had rack his brain for the word for 'dorm.' He couldn't find it. "When is your first class? I'll meet you outside your room."

"It's at eight."

He grimaced. "Damn. Okay. I'll be outside your door at seven forty – be ready." One of those inexplicable bits of trivia about her slammed into him; he was almost positive she would be late.

The next morning, true to his word, Shane was standing outside Kagome's dorm room at seven thirty, waiting for her. Every few minutes he stifled a yawn and checked his watch, waiting for exactly seven forty to roll around. When finally it did, he rapped three times.

A startled gasp issued from within. After a moment, the door swung inward to reveal a very frazzled-looking Japanese girl. She wrung her hands, an anxious twisting of skin that looked almost painful.

"I can't find my keys!" Abandoning him at the door, she whirled about to continue a frantic search of her room.

"Good God, could you be any fucking louder?"

A bleach blonde head popped up from one of beds, one covered in a garish orange-and-red, retro-themed flowered comforter. She might have been really pretty, but her expression could have curdled milk. Shane stood silently in the doorway, frowning at the caustic sarcasm.

Kagome had stopped dead in her tracks. "I'm sorry," she stammered contritely, eyes wide.

"Don't apologize," the other girl snapped. "Just be quiet!" With a peevish huff, the California blonde twisted under the tasteless comforter and pulled it over her stringy locks.

Kagome looked at him helplessly, and he rolled his eyes to show his disregard for the nasty roommate she'd been paired off with. Catching a glint of silver metal out of the corner of his eye, he nodded toward her television. Sure enough, the keys had somehow ended up shoved behind the plasma TV, pushed out of the way by a pile of messily stacked books. Kagome pointed to the books, and then to the lump under the comforter, indicating that the books were not hers.

"Your roommate's gorgeous," Shane remarked, rather too loudly, as Kagome picked up her big pink backpack and joined him in the hallway. "I've always had a soft spot for bottle-blonde hair."

A strappy, silly-looking stiletto sailed across the room and out the door, inches from Kagome's face. Kagome gave a little yelp of fright and ducked away – quick, quick reflexes, Shane noticed. He picked up the shoe, thinking with satisfaction that it looked expensive.

"I really hope ya didn't like that shoe, babe," he drawled, in a fair imitation of Maverick's most charming twang. "Considering thatcha broke it." He winked at Kagome and snapped the heel off. With a flip, careless motion, he tossed the remains of the shoe into the dorm room. A string of some of the foulest curses he'd ever heard accompanied the return of the stiletto, but Shane calmly shut the door against them.

"Got everything, now?"

She had that funny look on her face again. "Yes, thanks." She looked at the door, a little embarrassed. "And thanks for..." she gestured toward her door. "I don't know how to be nicer to her. She doesn't like me."

He shrugged. "Can't fix stupid. I wouldn't worry about it. Just avoid her as much as you can." She was clutching a piece of paper in her hand along with her keys; he assumed it was her schedule.

"What's your first class?" He was right, she handed him the paper. He didn't bother to read it completely, but found the first line. "Alright, come with me. This room's not going to be much fun finding – there have been several wings added in the past couple of years, and the room numbers make absolutely no sense."

Kagome sighed and fell in step beside him. For a few minutes they walked quietly, until Shane realized that she seemed a little taller than she ought to. Glancing down at her feet, he saw that her shoes weren't much more sensible than the one he had broken.

"You'll get tired of those fast." He pointed at her feet, and she blushed.

"I just feel so short around all these tall American girls," she confessed. "I was tall for my school, and I feel really short here."

Her too-tall stature bothered him in more ways than he wanted to think about, so he dropped it.

"What made you choose Berkeley?" he asked after a minute. The building he wanted was within sight, but the silence had grown uncomfortable.

She hesitated before speaking. "After my… friends… passed on, I wanted to get away from my memories." A sad kind of irony colored her tone.

The image of the picture she'd shown them the day before came to mind.

"No such luck, huh."

"No."

"Tell me about them? If you don't mind – if I'm butting in too much, just say so."

She shook her head. "I am realizing now that there are more memories I want to hold onto than ones I want to forget. Sango and Miroku were wonderful people, and I…" she swallowed, "I treasure my friendship with them."

"And the other guy?" he asked. He released the breath he realized he had been holding.

"The other…" Something glazed over in her eyes, and he knew she wasn't going to tell him everything. "He was special to me. I miss him very, very much."

He felt as though he'd forced her to rip off a band-aid too early, and they didn't say anything else as he led her to her first class room.

"Class gets out at nine thirty. I'll be back to get you then."

She smiled, though sadness lingered in her eyes. "Thank you, Shane."

"Give me your schedule."

He took the folded sheet of paper she offered, and left her to her first class. Not really wanting to drive back to the apartment in rush hour traffic, he headed for the caff for some breakfast instead.

Shane scowled at the cereal choices – every other damn breakfast cereal was chocolate, and he hated it. Although he wasn't technically allergic to it, although he actually liked the taste, chocolate inevitably made him queasy, so he avoided it like the plague. Settling for Chex, he found an empty two-person table and fished Kagome's schedule out of his pocket.

"Oh, shit," he muttered to himself, scanning the neatly creased paper. She'd managed to get her 8:00 and her 9:45 classes on completely opposite sides of the campus – without a bicycle, there was no way she'd ever make it to class on time. He'd made the same mistake his first semester. Sighing heavily, he returned the schedule to his pocket and finished his breakfast, figuring that her professor would probably let her off easy the first few days. Most of them did.

His cell phone jangled while he was perusing the school paper; Sonja wanted to know if he'd eaten. He told her he was in the caff, and she promised to hurry down. She showed up about ten minutes later. Until she left for her first class, he listened to her ramble about a half-dozen things, not really contributing much to the conversation.

It had always been like that, though, as long as he could remember. He wasn't a talkative kind of person. Only when Maverick and Sonja had come around had he even really begun to trust other people with his feelings, and even now, he didn't really waste words. He wasn't shy, exactly; he just felt that people in general talked too much about things that didn't make one bit of difference to them or anyone else. But Sonja and Maverick liked to talk, and he liked them, so he often bit back the "so whats" and "big deals" that popped into his head.

When Sonja left, he went back to Kagome's classroom.

She was waiting in the hall.

"Did he let you out a little early, since it was the first day?"

"Yes." Something in her voice seemed a little uncertain, and he realized that no one else was standing around.

On a hunch, he asked her how early she'd gotten out.

"He only kept us a few minutes." A rosy blush of embarrassment filled her cheeks. "I couldn't remember how to get back to my room…" she said, staring at the floor.

Shane laughed out loud. "It's just across the street, Kagome," he said, pointing out the window. "Just behind that building."

Her flush deepened. "Oh."

Chastened, he bit his tongue and showed her the problem in her schedule.

"It's going to take you twenty minutes to walk that, you know."

She frowned. "I thought that the next class started at 9:45."

"It does."

"But… I don't understand. Why put classes so close to the other that you can't get from them?"

Shane blinked, trying to sort out her jumbled syntax. "Ask me in Japanese."

"It doesn't make sense! Why would they schedule classes to end and begin only fifteen minutes apart, if they know it can take longer to get between them?"

Shane sighed. "Welcome to college, sweetheart." Looking at his watch, he swore. Thirteen minutes.

Blue-grey eyes followed his, widening in disbelief as they landing on the face of his watch. "Oh, no," she groaned. "Late, on the first day!" Kagome turned a pleading expression on him, and he took her by the elbow and hustled her out of the building.

As they walked, she seemed to grow more and more frustrated, and the fact that he noticed the shift made him extremely, extremely nervous. Shane wasn't stupid, but he knew himself to be pretty oblivious when it came to other people's feelings. He'd learned, over time, to recognize what subjects and actions were likely to rile Maverick and Sonja, but he never seemed to pick up on the subtle expressions and gestures that gave away someone's state of mind. But with her, it was different.

Like now. There was a tightness in her mouth, an almost imperceptible strain in her eyes. She wasn't talking, and she should have been. Long as her legs were, they weren't long enough to keep up with his, stride for stride, and she was practically running to keep up with his quick pace.

"It's not that bad," he told her, feeling flustered. "Most of the professors understand that the scheduling system is stupid. Just make sure you take a seat near the door, as close to the front as you can manage, so that you disturb the fewest people possible.

She just gave him an unhappy look. Something very peculiar came over him, and he stopped suddenly.

"Get on." She shook her head in confusion and he knelt in front of her, and he looked back over his shoulder, grinning wryly. "I used to do this for Sonja. She had a professor who wouldn't tolerate tardiness at all, and she could never get there quick enough. Hope you don't mind being a little embarrassed."

She stared at him blankly for several seconds, and then rested a tentative hand on his shoulder. After that, she grew a little bolder, and managed to slip both of her slender arms around his neck. Looking away, she raised her legs over his hips to straddle his lower back.

Shane straightened. "Hold on tight," he warned.

Except for a mumbled 'tsank you,' she didn't say another word to him. As he walked out of the building – which he'd gotten her to exactly on time, thank you very much – he wondered if maybe the piggy-back ride had been too familiar for strangers.

But then, he remembered with a shiver, in so many ways, she didn't seem like a stranger at all.

Maverick called him as he was making his way back to his car, and asked him to meet him at the campus coffee shop. It was out of his way, and Shane told him so in no uncertain terms, but he went anyway.

When he got there, Maverick was fastening the lid to a steaming coffee – black, Shane knew, and as dark a roast as was available.

"Caramel macchiato," Maverick said with a grin, handing him an open cup of heaven, "with whip."

"What's the occasion?" Shane demanded, dipping a finger into the creamy white paradise that topped his drink. He licked it clean, watching Maverick expectantly.

"A favor."

Shane groaned. "You only _ask_ for favors when it's something big."

His friend seated himself in the lounge, and nodded at an open chair across from him.

"We've been buddies a long time, Shane."

Eyeing Maverick suspiciously, Shane nodded, noting for the first time the beads of sweat at the southerner's temple.

"Sonja..." Maverick hesitated, then began again. "She's been alone for a long time. I mean, not _alone_ alone, but… other than you and me, there hasn't been anyone to… look out for her… in a long time."

"No shit." Shane shrugged. "Get to the point."

Maverick sighed, and suddenly seemed very, very young. "I love her," he confessed.

Shane wrinkled his nose. "Tell her, not me, dumbass. And, by the way, no shit."

"The point is," Maverick continued resolutely, "that I want to be the one to look out for her for the rest of her life."

"Are you really just figuring this out?" Shane put his little piece of heaven down on one of the side tables and buried his face in his hands. "Dumbass. I could have told you that the minute you met her."

"Well, I know now, and I'm gonna ask her to marry me."

"Oh, yeah, give her a wedding to plan her senior year. I'm sure she'll thank you for that." Shane snorted, but Maverick was already shaking his head.

"No. I'm going to surprise her with it." Maverick grinned.

"Big deal. A proposal is supposed to be a surprise."

"Not the proposal. The wedding."

That took him off-guard. "The what?"

Maverick took a long swig of his coffee. How he managed to do it without scorching his lips, mouth, throat, and every taste bud he possessed, Shane had never figured out. "I'm going to ask her to marry me at our wedding."

Shane stared. "You're nuts."

His friend grinned beatifically. "I think she'll go for it. She's not the kind a girl to spend months freaking out over whether she should get roses or lilies, or have Pachabel or Wagner played at the ceremony. But she is exactly the kind of girl who would appreciate not having to worry about it at all."

"And if she said no?"

Maverick's looked hurt. "She won't say no."

"Say she did, just for a minute. You're out God knows how much money, and you've run off the best thing that's ever happened to you, all in the space of about ten seconds."

"She won't say no," Maverick insisted stubbornly. "We were meant to be together. She knows that."

Yes, she knew that. Maverick knew it. Hell, Shane knew it, had known it, almost from the beginning.

He put his caramel macchiato down to better glower at the ever-composed charmer. "I think you're asking for an ass-kicking, personally. Girls are funny about weddings and proposals and that kind of stuff. Assuming you know what she wants is just trouble waiting to happen."

"I'm not stupid, Shane. I did my homework. I've been planning this damn thing for almost six months, squeezing her for information a little at a time. She doesn't care if we have a long engagement – in fact, she said she'd almost rather elope spontaneously, since there's no one we really care to invite. Except you, obviously. I think she was exaggerating, but the spur-of-the-moment thing works for her. I know her tastes – even if it's not perfect, I think she'll forgive me if the gesture's big enough."

"I still think it's stupid."

"Well, think that, if it makes you happy. Just say you'll help me. And that you won't tell Sonja."

Shane looked at him helplessly, unable to think of any good reason to say no. Maverick and Sonja were his best friends. Sonja was the only reason he had survived chemistry, often hunched over their apartment's dining table with a graphing calculator and a lab book reworking his badly skewed calculations. Maverick kept him out of trouble, kept him out of stupid fights, kept him from saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. Sesshoumaru hadn't been an awful older brother, but he was really too busy to be around much, and the two lovers were as much his family as Sesshoumaru ever had been.

He picked up his caramel macchiato and stared into the swirls of caramel. Finally, with the best scowl he could muster, he looked up to glare at his best friend. "What do you want me to do?"


	9. Deja Vu

Inuyasha and Co. belong to Rumiko Takahashi.

**Deja Vu**

"I can't believe I'm doing this." Dust from the silk flowers he had snatched up from a bin scattered into a million sparkling motes in the air; he sneezed loudly.

"Bless you," Kagome replied, pulling the stems apart to make sure that the rose-colored lilies were all presentable. "Are you allergic to dust?"

"I don't think so. But when there's so much of it…" He scowled.

Kagome smiled sympathetically. "I'll get some silk flower gloss and clean them up when we get back to your apartment." Her brows furrowed. "You don't think they'll be back yet, do you?"

Her English was improving considerably, no doubt due to the hours of conversation Sango had engaged her in. "Nah, I doubt it. It's Friday; I'm sure they didn't even get a table until…" he checked his watch, "probably don't even have one yet, actually."

Kagome picked up another bouquet of lilies, but put it back, evidently deciding the bent petals were too noticeable.

"You didn't have to come with me," he said, a little sullenly, watching her fiddle with yet another flower bunch.

"I think it was sweet of you to do this for Maverick, so I don't mind helping." There was a note of pleasure in her voice that made his stomach flip-flop, and a surge of resentment bubbled up within. How could someone he knew so little of do such peculiar things to him?

"Maverick and Sonja spend so much time together," she was saying, "that it's hard for him to get away and shop for wedding stuff."

"I think it's a dumb idea, anyway," Shane muttered, "but if he's going to spring a surprise wedding on her, it had better be perfect. She deserves that much, if she's going to be stuck with my dumbass of a roommate for the rest of her life."

Kagome giggled. "You don't know girls at all, do you?"

He reddened. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that…" She pursed her lips, and started again. "Even the worst, meanest, pickiest bride melts coming down the aisle. Sonja probably won't even notice the flowers; a lot of women barely remember their weddings, even though they put so much time and effort into them."

"And money." Shane grimaced, looking at the price of the bouquet he held.

"And money," she agreed. Then she grinned. "But that doesn't mean we can't have fun making it perfect anyway!"

He groaned, but followed her to the bridal section of the craft store. "Do you have the picture Maverick gave you? The cake-topper he wanted?" She found the row of cake-toppers and looked at him expectantly.

Shane dug in a pocket and pulled out a crumpled, printed piece of paper. "Oh, that's pretty." Kagome's eyes wandered over the picture admiringly. "Maverick has better taste than I thought he would."

"Evidently he's been pumping her for information about this kind of stuff for a long time."

Kagome giggled again. It was, Shane noted, a nice-sounding giggle, innocent and happy without being just _too_ childish. "I bet she didn't even notice. Girls love to talk about weddings. Especially their own."

"I hope she didn't notice," Shane said honestly. "He's gone to a lot of trouble to keep this a surprise for her."

She found the cake-topper on the bottom shelf, and crouched down to retrieve it. But though she pulled it from the shelf, she continued to sit on her ankles, and her eyes lingered over the decoration awhile. "They remind me a lot of Sango and Miroku," she said out of nowhere.

Shane stared at her in surprise. She seldom mentioned her old friends, and when she did, she inevitably sounded sad. Now, she just seemed thoughtful. "Your friends in the picture."

"Yeah." She turned the cake-topper over in her hands, ostensibly checking it for damage. "Miroku liked to grope her, and she liked to pretend to be irritated with him. But he loved her, more than anything. And she would have died for him." She smiled, and if there was something regretful there, at least it wasn't the crushing grief of her past recollections. "They were lucky, to have loved like that. To have had each other, til the end."

"We're not here to reminisce," he reminded her, after an awkward pause, even though he cringed inwardly at the reproachful look she gave him.

"Oh, just give me that, would you?" He held out his hand. She looked up at him, and handed him the ornament.

"I'm going to go get some ribbon." She stood abruptly and walked away.

Dammit. He'd hurt her feelings.

Again.

He glared at the cake-topper, but the bride and groom continued to smile at one another, blissfully unaware of the glowering student above them.

It seemed like no matter how hard he tried to be nice to her, something about Kagome turned him into a shameless, insensitive smartass – especially when she was thinking about her life in Japan. Even though they had only known each other for a few days, she felt so familiar, and being with her felt so right. It knocked him off-balance – being near her was like having a bone-shattering case of déjà vu, and made him question his grasp on reality. And even though it was petty, he resented her for it.

What really sucked was that he was also beginning to like her. Really like her.

Kagome returned with the ribbon and a tight, unhappy look on her face. He looked at her, feeling more than a little guilty.

Her eyes widened with surprise as she met his gaze, and the hard line of her mouth relaxed a little. Somehow, she had picked up on his remorse.

He took the ribbon. "Thanks," he said reluctantly, choosing to ignore whatever had just happened. "Maverick also wanted us to get…" He pinched the bridge of his nose. "Shit."

"I'm sure that's not what he said he wanted," she replied wryly, evidently deciding to put his nastiness aside for Maverick and Sonja's sake. "You should pay better attention – floral wire and floral tape, Shane. A hundred and fifty feet of white lights. And a roll of ivory tulle." Her eyes drifted to the side, and she bit her lip. "And… something else that I'm forgetting."

"You'll probably remember it as we get the other stuff." He put the cake figurine in the basket.

"Probably." The tulle was easy enough to find, as were the floral wire and floral tape, but they had trouble locating the lights. Christmas was still several months away, and although a few rows of ornaments and stockings had been put out, the store hadn't unloaded their stock of lights yet.

"They'll have some in another department, surely," Kagome said, but she didn't look at all certain. "Let me ask someone."

She found a man in a red vest, and he pointed her to the bridal section.

Shane rolled his eyes. "Figures. We must have walked right past them."

As they returned to the bridal department, his stomach reminded him that it was well after seven.

"Are you hungry? When did you eat lunch?" he asked, grabbing an arm to pull her out of the way of frazzled-looking mom and her three kids.

"Um…" Kagome blinked, staring after the family. "I actually skipped lunch." She smiled sheepishly. "I had some Skittles this afternoon, though."

He glared at her. "That's not real food."

"I was busy! And besides, you're one to talk, Ramen-king. Sonja told me about the insides of yours and Maverick's cabinets. Peanut butter, and ramen, and snack cakes. Maybe some chips." She laughed. "I don't think you have any place to be lecturing me about real food."

He had an insane urge to bare his teeth at her, like an animal.

"What do you want for dinner?"

"Hmm?" They had come to the boxes of white lights, and she picked up two different colored boxes to examine. "Oh, I thought I would go to the caff when I got back."

"They won't have anything that late. Sandwich stuff."

She selected one of the boxes and got a half dozen just like it. "That's fine."

"It's not either. Not when you haven't had anything decent all day."

She put the boxes in their basket, careful not to smash the flowers. "There's several fast-food places near my dorm."

"That's junky, too," he countered.

She blew out an exasperated sigh. "Well, what do you suggest?"

He bit his tongue, not ready for her entirely too obvious question. "Um…"

"See? Don't whine about a problem if you don't have any ideas for a solution." She sounded amused.

There were several options she hadn't considered. He could make something when they got to the apartment – he wasn't a gourmet, but he didn't burn water, either. They could get take-out, which really wasn't any healthier than fast food, so he threw that idea out. Or he could take her somewhere.

"There's an Italian place just down the street from the apartment," he found himself saying. She looked a little surprised, but she didn't reply.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Well, what? You haven't asked me anything."

He glared at her yet again. "Did you want to get dinner at the Italian place, or not?"

"Oh." She considered that for a minute. "Okay. Thanks."

"Just friends, you know," he added, "just to say thanks for helping me out here. Maverick would have been pissed if I'd forgotten everything."

She looked a little flushed, but her laughter sounded normal enough. "Speaking of that, I know we've forgotten something."

"Nah. I remembered." He reached out and snagged a box of deep pink rose petals. "For the cake table," he said with a grimace.

She laughed again, and the sound was so pleasant that as they went to the check-out line, he began to wonder if he shouldn't have called their upcoming dinner a date, after all.

The dinner went surprisingly well; he'd managed to even be a little bit charming, to be a little of his normal, nice guy self. They didn't beat Sonja and Maverick back to the apartment, but Shane kept the wedding supplies hidden in the car until Sonja had left, and then stashed them in his closet. As the next couple of weeks passed, neither the familiarity nor the tension he felt when he was near Kagome dissipated in the least.

He liked her; that was obvious. Her sweet personality was tempered with an unusual amount of pure grit and determination, and her pretty grey-blue eyes distracted him to no end. And the more he realized how much he liked her, the more frustrated he became, and the less able he was to be himself – a normal, laid-back, and not infrequently charming nice guy.

Instead, he criticized her eating habits. Told her she wasn't getting enough sleep – actually stole a textbook, once, so that she couldn't study anymore. He hauled her over the coals if she walked around campus alone after dark. Made flashcards for her history class, and corrected her algebra homework – making sure to ridicule her in the process. And for some weird reason, she put up with it.

Shane had always had a temper, for as long as he could remember, and not a scrap of patience. Even so, he didn't much care for the jerk he was becoming. But damned if he knew what to do about it.

Then the dreams started.


	10. Advice

Everybody still belongs to Miss Takahashi, guys.

Okay, for those of you who've been reading California Dreaming for awhile, I'm really sorry. I know it says I updated, and I did, honest... but I added Chapter 9: Deja Vu. The break between Gestures and Advice really bothered me, it felt like I had glossed over way too much. So... I'm sorry. I promise, I'll post a new chapter soon, like, within two or three days, to make up for the disappointment. Hang in there -- Cally Dreaming won't be nearly as long as After the BoneEater's Well. Cross my heart.

**Advice**

There were a few things that Shane really treasured. Most of them were things that his brother had given to him over the years. Some of them were extremely valuable, like the car, or the Gibson, and some of them had no special value at all, except between the brothers. His mother had died young, and he had never known his father, so for much of his life, Sesshoumaru had been father, brother, and companion – at least, whenever he had the time.

It wasn't his fault that he wasn't around much. Running the business took a lot of his time, and Shane hadn't resented that in years. He'd learned long ago that Sesshoumaru's gifts were the brother's way of saying everything from "I'm sorry" to "Happy Birthday." He had a particular knack for getting exactly what Shane wanted or needed, sometimes before Shane himself knew.

Like the Steinway. Of all of Sesshoumaru's gifts, the grand piano that stood in the parlor of his brother's California mansion was the one Shane cherished most. It was an antique, beautifully restored, and had a rich, resonant tone that was unmatched by any instrument Shane had ever touched.

There had been no occasion for it, really. Not graduation, not Christmas, not a birthday. Just one day in the spring, Sesshoumaru had called from Prague or Milan or some other high-profile place, and asked him to go down to the parlor. And there it was, an 1878 Victorian Steinway, shining like the day it was built, with fresh copies of his favorite sonatas waiting on the bench.

Gifts like the Steinway, like the Gibson, like the GTO, they meant Sesshoumaru cared enough not just to invest big money in his little brother, but enough of his time and concern to acquaint himself with Shane's tastes and interests.

So Shane was at a loss when Sesshoumaru became one of the enemies in his dreams.

About two weeks after Maverick's bombshell request, the first of a number of bad dreams began to plague Shane. They weren't exactly nightmares, because he wasn't exactly afraid. When he woke, however, he was drenched in sweat, and more often than not, enraged to the point of violence.

Which explained his purchases of three alarm clocks in the course of the past week.

Usually, the enemy in his dream was another, a shadowy figure with a name that made him think of spiders, but which he could never remember when he woke up. He did remember Sesshoumaru, though. He remembered the Sesshoumaru from his vision with the bushy-tailed redhead and the little dawn-eyed girl – the white-haired, vampiric-looking Sesshoumaru. Except this Sesshoumaru despised him. Wanted him dead.

After ten nights of progressively more intense dreams, Shane left the apartment he shared with Maverick and headed for the wine country of Santa Barbara, where Sesshoumaru kept one of his summer houses, and where the Steinway resided. And then he did something he almost never stooped to.

He called his big brother.

"Today?" Sesshoumaru sounded surprised. "I doubt it, Shane. There has been a lot of storm activity and flooding around Venice. Nothing is getting out, not even the jet."

"Oh." Shane bit his tongue, irritated with the disappointment he could hear in his voice. He cleared his throat. "Not your fault. Just when you get a chance. I'd really like to talk to you."

"We're talking now." Normally, that comment would have carried a faintly irritable note in it. Today, there was a question there instead. Sesshoumaru, Shane thought wryly, could be awfully perceptive.

"I mean in person, dumbass."

"You should have specified."

"Whatever. Listen, I'll be at the vineyards at Santa Barbara for a few days, so just… if you can."

There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. "I'll see what I can do, Shane. The weather has forced the cancellation of most of the conferences I was planning on attending here anyway."

"Sorry."

"Don't be. Dry, tiresome stuffed shirts for the most part." He paused. "Shane, are you alright? You're not in any trouble, are you?"

"No," Shane assured him. "Just some weird stuff I've been thinking about. Need a fresh perspective, that's all."

"Ah. Well, I make no promises, but I'll do what I can."

"Thanks."

He made it to the vineyard before dawn, having condensed a six hour drive into approximately four and a half. Even though he'd spend a lot of his childhood in Santa Barbara, the vineyards seemed strangely foreign in the cool morning light. The whole world had turned topsy-turvy since Kagome had stumbled into Maverick's arms the first day of class. She was a stranger, and he felt like he had known her a lifetime; while his distant-but-never-hostile older brother had begun to stalk his dreams like an insatiable, remorseless predator.

In a month, Kagome had settled into his life as if she had always been there, always belonged there. After hearing about the blonde psycho-bitch that Kagome had been placed with, Sonja had invited the exchange student to stay in her dorm for the remainder of the semester. That in itself was strange; Sonja kept to herself most of the time, and valued her privacy. Maverick was having a ball teaching Kagome to play the guitar, and was even talking about finding her a bridesmaid's dress to wear at the secret wedding he was planning. Friendships that had grown up over the course of several years had shifted enough in a few weeks time to admit a new member into their group.

Shane wasn't happy about it. He found himself sulking when the four of them were together, much to the consternation of his old friends and to Kagome's confusion. It was petty, and it wasn't really like him at all, but there it was, an ugly, bitter resentment toward the girl who had so disrupted his life.

And yet, he had this bizarre, frighteningly primitive urge to take care of her. After that first day, the piggy-back ride to her 9:45 class had become sort of their 'thing' – people had even stopped staring. He wanted to make sure she got through her homework alright. He insisted she call her mom and her family every few days. He scolded her when she forgot meals, or when she ate nothing but junk, or when she didn't get enough sleep. Not that he was ever particularly nice about it, because he didn't want to care so much about someone he didn't even know.

But he _did_ care, dammit, cared so much it hurt sometimes. The thought that she might not always be around drove him to distraction. To his shame, he had even taken to scaling the wall outside Sonja's dorm at night and peeking in their window, just to make sure she was there, to make sure she was safe. It was an impulse he couldn't quash, and the driving urgency of the compulsion frightened him.

What frightened him the most, though, was that the more out-of-character he acted, the more stubborn or rude or sullen he became, the more comfortable he was with her, the less awkward their relationship became. It was like playing a video game he'd memorized as a kid, and even all these years later, he could pick it up and remember every trick, every map, every secret level. Somewhere deep within him, he knew her that intimately.

Even though they'd only met a month before.

It was all very, very troublesome, he decided, pulling up in front of the six car garage at the Santa Barbara summer house. An attendant met him at the door and took his bags, another promised to ready his room for him. He smiled and thanked them, and wondered why their solicitousness made him feel awkward. Being waited on hand and foot was part of being Sesshoumaru's kid brother, and he couldn't recall that it had ever bothered him before.

He found his way to the Steinway, and spent most of the day poised over the ivories, lost in melodies even older than the instrument. The music seemed to soothe whatever demon within him had been roused.

Some hours later, a light touch on his shoulder startled him.

"Sesshoumaru? I thought you weren't going to be able to leave Italy!" Relief surged in his veins, and he got to his feet. Sesshoumaru would know what to do with his sudden off-centeredness.

His brother laid his head to one side. "It is amazing what one can do with enough money." Sesshoumaru's odd golden eyes softened just a bit, so imperceptibly that anyone but Shane would have missed the faint expression of pleasure. They clasped hands warmly, lingering over the age-old gesture of peace and greeting.

"I'll assume you've made arrangements with your professors," Sesshoumaru said, "because even though I don't believe it, I would prefer to postpone the unpleasantness of a quarrel."

Shane grinned, finally relaxed. "You're right."

Sesshoumaru raised his very eloquent brows. "I usually am." Glancing about the room, he gestured to the too-pretty-to-be-comfortable furniture across the room. "You wanted to talk to me."

They seated themselves opposite each other. Sesshoumaru settled onto the edge of a sofa cushion, back ramrod straight, and Shane sprawled in the bergere that face him.

"So, there's this girl…"

Sesshoumaru listened, silent but attentive, as Shane told him about Kagome, and the inexplicable connection he felt with her. He didn't seem surprised or put off when Shane described his dreams, even when he explained Sesshoumaru's role in them. Shane's abnormal behavior, the sullenness, the irritability, the bad-temperedness, none of that fazed him.

When he finally ended with, "So… am I crazy," Sesshoumaru just shook his head.

"I wouldn't concern myself overmuch. You're probably just in love with the girl. Take her to bed once or twice and be done with it."

Shane blinked in disbelief. "Take her… what?"

"Sleep with her. Make love to her. Copulate. We've had this discussion before; I'm certain you know what's involved."

"I did not just hear that." Shane shook the image away, more embarrassed about what it did to him than the fact that his older brother had suggested it.

"You have good instincts, Shane, if you would ever think to use them," Sesshoumaru went on relentlessly. "Being near her feels right, does it not?"

Shane buried his face in his hands. "Yes," he mumbled, "even though it shouldn't. Even though she makes me crazy."

Sesshoumaru shook his head. "Your intuition has already set a course for you. Just because you do not yet understand the motives behind it doesn't mean that they are inappropriate or incorrect."

"She barely knows me!"

"Do you love her?"

Shane blanched, and stared helplessly at Sesshoumaru. He'd avoided the l-word like he avoided chocolate, because it was so wrong, so, so wrong to feel so strongly about someone he had just met. Especially when that feeling had been around since the moment he'd first seen her.

Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed slightly. "Do you?"

Shane cursed.

"I suppose that means 'yes.' You desire her happiness, you worry over her health and safety, you can't get her out of your mind. So on and so forth."

Shane bolted out of his chair and began to pace. "But I shouldn't."

Sesshoumaru sighed, or rather, released a very faint huff of aggravation. "Stop worrying about that. You do. Why isn't the issue. The issue is what you're going to do about it."

"Well, I could march up to the chick I just met and ask her to marry me." He snorted. "Yeah, that would go over well."

"That would be premature," Sesshoumaru agreed, ignoring the sarcasm. "However, there are a number of fairly well established customs and rituals in place regarding the courtship of hu… of young women."

"Courtship." Shane stopped pacing. "You mean date her."

"I thought I just said that," Sesshoumaru said mildly.

He considered that for a moment. "I don't think so, Sesshoumaru. She got hurt pretty bad with the last guy she fell in love with. Who happened to look a whole lot like me."

"Did you tell me her name?" Sesshoumaru asked, a curiously cautious note in his voice.

"No. It's Higurashi Kagome."

"Ah. In that case, it would perhaps be better if you did not mention my name to her."

Shane's jaw dropped. "You know her?" Then it occurred to him. "Did you know the other guy, too?"

His brother's eyes were usually a little distant, a little distracted, as though the mundane things of the world held little interest to him. But they were sharply focused now, alert and wary.

"Yes, I knew him. He was an egotistical, unsophisticated hothead who never could accept his place in the natural order of things."

That was unlike Sesshoumaru, to be so brutally critical, so unforgiving, and Shane would have said so if he had been given the opportunity. But Sesshoumaru spoke again, with a quiet conviction that sent shivers down his spine.

"He was also the best and bravest of men, and possessed an ability to persevere that I have never seen matched in this world."

The mystery disappeared from his eyes, but the alertness remained, became a frank, serious gaze that was somehow just as alien. "If he is the man you must surpass to win her, you have my sympathies, because it will not be easily done."

Shane sank back down into his chair as Sesshoumaru rose to leave, feeling somehow very small.

"Still," Sesshoumaru said from the doorway, "if anyone could outdo Inuyasha, it would be you. I believe that. So should you." A rare, knowing smile turned up the corners of Sesshoumaru's mouth, and then he was gone, leaving Shane alone with his thoughts.


End file.
